Our preparation for the nearly 4,000 meter Wheeler Peak in Nevada was not nearly as detailed as many people, including us, do for Borneo’s Mt Kinabalu. This was mostly because Mt Kinabalu is a high volume tourist machine, and Wheeler is happily remote and undeveloped, so you’re not forced to stay at a hostel overnight and make your summit push at 2am. You just wake up and climb it. This probably explains why I was so puffed on the last push to Wheeler’s summit. That, and the 15 kg child on my shoulders.
Wheeler Peak is Nevada’s second highest mountain, though not even in the top 100 for the United States. It’s what you can call a “trekking peak” – one you can walk up with no technical climbing skills or even any scrambling. Still, at 3,982 meters (13,065 feet) above sea level, and about 900 vertical meters above the campsite, it’s a serious mountain where altitude can affect you and even make you sick.
As we plugged our way up the rocky path, I was really feeling it. The highest I’ve ever been was much higher than this – 6,137 meters on top of Stok Kangri and nearly 6,000 meters before turning back on Huayna Potosi – but on both those trips I was not carrying a kid. About every 50 meters I had to stop, catch my breath, and put our daughter down for a few minutes. Then, hoist her back up, plod on a bit further, all the while staring up into that deep blue sky and wondering if the clouds I saw were bringing an epic storm like the one we’d endured two days before. My gut, and my brain, in a rare accurate consensus, told me it was safe to continue.
 Lunar Crater |
 Western Mongolia |
 Stok Kangri |
Just two years ago, I made it to nearly 4,000 meters on Malchin Peak, with the kid on my back in a heavy carrier, with no ill-effects at all (I only turned around because of the high winds). Perhaps this shows how much fitness I’ve lost since then; perhaps the kid was lighter; perhaps the starting elevation was higher. Perhaps all three; perhaps I just wasn’t feeling it up on Wheeler.
Finally, though, the seemingly incessant slow reveal of yet more rocks ahead of me, like a giant conveyor belt or one of those crappy mechanical car games from the 70s, came to an end. There was nowhere else to walk, no more rocks to face, just wide views for what, a hundred miles? The cloud I’d worried about was not the huge bank of angry storm cloud I’d envisaged from below, just a passing fluffy white one.
Down below in every direction was the Great Basin, the vast desert plains spotted with islands of mountains like Wheeler Peak that rose up towards the sky and hosted their own distinct micro climates.
We climbed this with our good friends R and E who’d joined us from California just for the climb. At the end of that long, hot day, we all cooled off in the beautiful glacial lake beneath the summit far above. Nearby, deer gambolled – it’s exactly the right word – and a large and friendly family held a reunion right there on the shore, all with matching t-shirts. It was nearly dark by the time we got back to the tents, and I think we all appreciated those roasted marshmallow and chocolate concoctions known as “s’mores”. It was like a hundred grammes of sugar for every 100 meters of vertical we climbed that day.
Looks like fun! Not sure about the red trousers. Surely not too difficult to get camo in US?
The red pants rule!