Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board A labor of love

As some of you may recall from the "Dave and Jeff's Excellent Adventure" post, my buddy and I (both non-mountaineering, middle-aged physicians from suburban Detroit) summited Whitney via the MR in September. Below is the link to the movie I made of our adventure. Beware - it's long (31 minutes) but I think it's pretty cool and anyone who has been up the MR will probably find it amusing. Thanks again to everybody on this board for all the great advice. We're considering another trip - maybe Shasta or even Rainier but I feel like we tempted fate once and got away with it so I'm not sure if we should try again. If you're bored and decide to watch the movie, enjoy.

Midlife Madness

Just . . . damn! By far, the best video I've seen of a Whitney ascent. After watching this I have a much clearer perspective of the MR - and the difficulty involved. In the future, whenever I begin thinking, "hey, why not the MR?", I'll go back and watch this for a reality check.

Truly a labor of love, and exceptionally well done!

Jeff, Dave - hearty congratulations! Especially on the downclimb rather than heading down the MMWT.

And I bet it will NOT be the last time you guys see this mountain . . .

Good for you. So, where exactly are you on the CRAP-I'M-SCARED ... I-CAN'T-WAIT-TO-GO-BACK spectrum? There's some function in terms of time and beers consumed that will give you an exact figure.

Goosebumps!

Congratulations guys.

If you haven't seen the movie, check it out. These guys are not only brave souls........they're funny too!

Thanks for sharing the movie.

You obviously put a lot of time and thought into putting all the sounds, pictures and video together.

When we did the MWMT in early August my high school friend from Santa Barbara mentioned about trying the mountaineer route. I knew at that time that we did not have the experience to do it by ourselves. After reading your trip report, reading other reports on the route and seeing your movie I am thinking about giving it a try sometime. It would probably help with getting prepared to do some of the other highpoints out west.

Thanks guys. I'm really psyched about the positive responses. The movie was a big deal for us because it is the definitive account of a trip which is unlikely to be equaled in our lives. This is mention-at-your-funeral type stuff. We were very lucky with the weather, managed to avoid illness and injury and had an awesome guide. Even if we do another mountain the thrill of the first time will be missing.

I had 47 minutes of video all in about 20 second clips and 350 pictures to work with. It took about 45 hours to come up with the final 31 minute video. I got to relive the whole trip over and over again. I figured if Jeff and I were the only ones that liked it, well that was fine with me. I'm glad others have enjoyed it too. If it inspires anyone to climb Whitney I'll be pretty happy.

Dave

I was looking for my Thumbs Up photo to link to here.

This is a classic that we'll be sending "MR newbies" to for a while to come. Excellent video.

This is killing me!
I am having computer issues and have NO SOUND, and don't want to watch this video until my sound is restored, and I REALLY want to watch the video.
I guess I will have to hijack another computer.
I feel like my daughter waiting for the next Harry Potter movie to come out.

Mongoose - Thanks in advance for filming, editing and sharing your adventure.

Hi ClimbSTRONG, You may want to click the "download". On mine, it didn't let me download the movie, but it seemed to "fix" everything when I closed the download.

I watched the movie the next day to finish up what I hadn't watched and had to do the same thing.....press "download", cancel.....then watch. It was either me spending a half an hour trying to figure it out, or waiting for my wife to fix it:-)

Yeah, I'd say you definitely want the sound. It's amazing what a difference music can make to a movie. Now I know why they give an Academy Award for editing.

I also had lots of trouble getting it to play. It was well worth the trouble. That was very well done!

This makes me appreciate where we live even more. We can head for Whitney, Shasta, or anywhere in between, on a moment's notice. We can wait for good weather and pull the trigger when conditions are just right. We can climb often, build our skills, and climb wonderful routes whenever we like. Those of us who live close are very fortunate. Sometimes it takes a TR or video from someone on the other side of the continent to remind us of that fact.

Couldn't agree more. We needed an entire week for this. Between the travel, acclimatization and the climb itself, we couldn't have done it in any less time. I envy you Cali types for having this kind of majesty in your backyard. We may well return at some point for another adventure but it's never going to be an every-other-weekend kind of thing for us.

Amen, brother! You guys and gals have the best of the country literally in your backyard. Personally, I consider the invention of the jetliner as a very considerate recognition of my need to get west of the Mississippi - often. Ditto for airline miles.

Yes, and now that you've ticked off the highest peak in the contiguous U.S., you can come back out for...

Cottonwood Lakes Basin...
Mitre Basin...
Wallace Creek...
Wright Lakes...
Dusy Basin...
Palisades Basin...

We could go on forever, but you get the idea. It doesn't have to be another peak. There are plenty of walks that normal, everyday people (with a little extra time) can do that will boggle the mind with the beauty of the areas.

We are lucky to call this our backyard. (Well (maybe) not really, since I fell into this on purpose.)

I could not agree more with Bob Pickering about Reno being in a location were it is easy access to some great outdoors.

Our son lives in Sparks and we have used his place as a start and end point for doing Boundary Peak last year and for Mt. Whitney this year. We used Mt Rose as a prep hike before heading down to Mt. Whitney. Our son took us to a gorge on the South Fork of the Yuba River. A great place for some relaxing fun in some cool water pools.

I am very envious of all those that live out west but I must admit that the green landscape in the east is also incredible.

Since we still have a lot more western highpoints to bag we can hardly wait to come back out for more fun.

My wife and I have given some serious consideration to retiring in the Reno area because of the great offerings for outdoor activities.

Mike:

The communities around Reno are really nice, plenty of land, close to shopping amenties (I mean, the Sierra Trading Post Outlet is there!). But, something else to consider for retiring is access to health care. Reno and Carson/Tahoe have the facilities that almost everyone from my neck of the woods is flown to for any kind of medical emergency. The orthopedic and spine centers there are pretty top-notch, too, from what I've seen on the other end working with their patients.

Access to a myriad of outdoor activities, as well as the health care to support yourself to do said activities = match made in heaven!

-L

Laura, thanks for the feedback.

You are right about needing good health care. I kind of figured that Reno had some good care. Our son's girl friend works in health care in the Reno area. She was offered a job there right out of school. So she and our son moved out there from Warren, PA.

Richard, thank you so much for your reply. Coming from you, one of the grand masters of Whitney, it is high praise indeed. Your trip reports and pics were a great motivation for us to take on this adventure. It's hard for me to convey what a huge accomplishment this was for us. Jeff and I have both run multiple marathons and we consider ourselves to be pretty active guys but neither of us had done anything remotely like this before. I've had minimal exposure to high altitude, a bit of camping experience from many years ago and a not-insignificant fear of heights, all of which conspired to make the MR particularly challenging. I'm 45, Jeff is 56 and we're anesthesiologists from suburban Detroit of all places. We planned the trip for about a year, and we're still riding the wave of glory two months later. It's not like there are a ton of people running around our Midwest hospital that have climbed mountains so we truly did return as the conquering heroes. I absolutely LOVED making the movie and I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Thanks again.

They do have a decent medical school in Reno, which is usually a good sign of available services. I was loosely associated with it many years ago, but I'd imagine it still does good work.

I had thought of the area as the perfect place to retire, and went so far as to buy a house at Incline Village, at Tahoe. That didn't work out in the long run, but I still think it is a perfect place. I lived in Sparks for a summer, the same summer I spent time drilling for gold in the Sierra.

Ah, the good old days!

Holy xxxx! indeed. If I had taken out the parts showing our fear and self-doubt, there would be no movie at all. This was WAY outside our comfort zone. We are armchair enthusiasts of adventure travel and I'm not entirely sure what compelled us to do Whitney (especially the MR) but I am so glad we did. I can't tell you how thrilled we are that we made it. Watching the movie now, a mere two months after summiting blows me away. I have no idea how we pulled this off. I suppose it was as much luck as skill but I'll take it. Our names are in the register and no one can take it away from us.