| Kearsarge Pinnacles-- How an Addiction Began Trip Report |
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| Kearsarge Pinnacles-- How an Addiction Began   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: California, United States, North America Date Climbed/Hiked: Jul 11, 1999 | Page By: Bob Sihler Created/Edited: Apr 28, 2007 / Feb 3, 2009 Object ID: 288922 Hits: 1364 Loading... Page Score: 86.79% - 3 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
When, and Where, Everything ChangedEverything changed here. In the afternoon, an end to thirty-six hours of nearly constant rain inspired a little wanderlust. I decided to find Kearsarge Basin’s upper lake, nearby and just a little bit higher than the campsite my brother Chris and I had made. I found the lake, and it was pretty, but there was still a lot of daylight left, and I still had a lot of energy, curiosity, and an urge for something more. What drew my gaze the most were the pinnacles of the basin, most of which looked unclimbable (then, not now) but which were tantalizing nonetheless. Now, many years later and with significant climbing experience gained, I probably would try one of the highest, most imposing ones, but my untested self opted then for a mostly snow-free couloir just left (east) of one of the lower and easternmost pinnacles. It doesn’t really matter now. What did and still does was the experience I had and what it meant to me.
The couloir was always steep and sometimes loose, but the going was more tiring than challenging. At the top, seeing what lay on the other side of the ridge, I could only stop and gape. Before me was a world I still see and hear. It was a world typical of so much of the High Sierra—raw rock that seemed to glisten in the sun, sparse evergreen forests, and water rushing far below. I especially remember the water; as I looked over and into a vast, trailless canyon, the roar of the river down there rose up through the halls of stone and filled me with an indomitable love for wild, rugged beauty. I wondered how many other pairs of eyes among the thousands that venture into the High Sierra each summer had ever seen what I was seeing at that moment. A few, no doubt, but still just a very few. And the distance from the trail, the height of my perch, and the remoteness of the terrain I saw gave brief plausibility to the thought that no one else ever had in fact beheld that view. I felt so alive and so much as one with the world around me.
From the ridge, I scrambled to the pinnacle, doing at most what I now know to be Class 3 moves. I did not climb the final ten feet or so to the summit. I could do it easily now and probably could have then if I’d mustered the nerve, but such moves and exposure were new to me, and I passed on the challenge.
But the outing changed my life. It was not my first time off-trail, but it was my first off-trail experience of that length, difficulty, and reward. Something awoke in me that day: a yearning to go farther and higher, especially higher, than the trodden ways would take me. No longer could the beaten path satisfy me. No longer could I hike into the wilds without needing to find my soul and my completion somewhere higher and less attainable. Here began my need for fuller escape and spiritual sustenance, my need to seek the world that few of even the hardiest hikers ever reach. I am not at peace if I cannot do this, and no actual trail has been able to give me true satisfaction ever since.
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