Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Retirement sale / gifting

Now at 81 y.o. l realize I'm done hiking the Sierra. My last trip, in Oct, to Lake Reflection, was a great finale.

I have 12 trail guides, mostly for the Sierra, including Secor and Roper, and maps covering the area from Trail Pass to above Yosemite, that l want to give to someone who can use them. Conditions: you pick them up at my apt in downtown LA and you take them all.

Also, l will get rid of my mtn car, a 2003 Suby Forester, w/149,000 miles on it. It's in good shape mechanically but the body is beat up. I bought it new and have complete service records from day 1. The minimum l'll take is $500. (Less than that I'll donate it to charity.)

I will be 69 in March. I feel the door closing myself, little by little, year after passing year. My 93 year old father-in-law told me before he passed "Getting old is hell."

Burt I read your post the first day and thought I would wait before I suggested you talk about the boots you and I wear , not that anyone will buy them because us old people wear them ,they are 6 ounces or more mass, keep your ankles and lower body balanced on cross county travel and with the narrow toe box your can 3-4 class travel up many routes.
The maps- no Burt "we" don't use them anymore, not that they might help us plan many great trips into the back country and you may have added a wealth of notes and corrections on the maps and over the years recorded water stops , campsites and where the wild onions show up, we could add all that on the electric things now, well until the battery fails or no cell coverage.

The big buzz the last few years on AMS , something you and I had heard about when you climb Everest , you followed up as you entered the twilight years and make a few solid observation that helped many on the Board and I am sure in the hiking climbing community. Thank you.

Now that solo stuff , when we wrote the Whitney book a proof reader caught the section on solo hiking and said Doug you do it all the time how can you tell people not to do it? Burt how did you do those hikes?

For the younger readers pray that you will be active in your later years do, all the great trips that Burt has , hike the local mountains and buy a pair of Zamberlans or Meindls.

Burt plan to see you June 3, at Baldy for the Heros hike we can ride up the lift with Shin, Jack, Rick and like that lady wrote "We are not over the hill we are in the Mountains"

Burt, PM sent. Thanks

Doug, I'm a terrible model for other hikers. I loved to hike solo and what's worse, I usually included an off-trail segment in my plans. That was partly to be sure that there would be a day or two when I probably wouldn't see anyone. Part was to push against my physical and mental limits. You know that I went too far one time and fell and needed to be pulled out by helicopter. Not a good model at all but at least I was careful enough to carry a PLB.
I’ve always been like that. My first JMT through hike was with a friend from Tuolome to the Portal but my second was solo, no resupply, and with the High Sierra tail added on.
About paper vs. pixels: of course I was hiking for years before GPS was available and even then I was slow to adopt. But at last I downloaded ViewRanger on my phone. After that I used maps and guidebooks to plan my trips and I always carried maps but I used GPS in the field.
Big thanks to you and the Portal crew and BB regulars. The BB is a great resource for everyone who hikes or climbs the Sierra or, like me now, just loves to read and think about them.

burtW!
Very interesting, especially doing the JMT with no re-supply! You must tell more about that experience!

Hi Gator,
My 2 JMT thru-hikes were in 1966 & 67, both N to S. I forget a lot of the details but on my solo JMT and High Sierra Trail hike ('67) I started off with 60 lbs in an REI knock-off of a Kelty external frame pack, which was the best thing available at the time. I carried a Svea stove and a lightweight Swedish 1-person tent. There were no bear cans then so I hung my food every night.
Leki poles were just starting to be used and I stuck with my homemade bamboo staff with a crutch tip and handlebar tape grip. Maybe if I was using Lekis I wouldn't have had so much artritis in my knees and hips later.
For food, oatmeal w/dry milk for breakfast. I made a mix of flour, dry milk, and salt and at lunch & dinner I added water, rolled it out with my bamboo staff, and cooked a tortilla on the bottom of my pan that I ate with pb or cheese. I carried dry cocoa mix for hot drinks but when I ran low on lunch foods I started eating the dry cocoa mix by the spoonful and ended up with a real addiction to chocolate that took 2 weeks to kick. I don't remember if freeze dried food was available for dinner or, if not, what I ate instead.
I aimed for about 12 miles a day with every 7th day off. One of my best memories is lying in the Kern River hot springs watching a kingfisher patrolling up and down the river.
On my 1st JMT trip my partner and I made camp one night at Grouse Mdw. Another friend left the Bay Area that morning and drove to the South Lake TH, hiked over Bishop Pass and met us at our campsite in time for dinner. The next morning we hiked together to Palisade Crk where he said goodbye, headed up up and over Knapsack and Bishop Passes and back to the Bay Area that night. Now that's a hiker!
Thanks for asking. It's fun to think back to those trips.