Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board The Whitney Follies

"fol·ly ( P ) Pronunciation Key (fl)
n. pl. fol·lies
A lack of good sense, understanding, or foresight.

An act or instance of foolishness: He regretted the follies of his youth.
A costly undertaking having an absurd outcome." (Webster College Dictionary.1999)
I was younger--I am now sorry- (a little)-but this forum is for the absurd. Isn't that what follies are?--I agree, it was an absurd prank-- and from the postings, there are a lot absurd people out there. Get a grip people. enjoy.

That young man in the "rock in the backpack" report by 60inchesTall went with me once on a scout hike. In 3 days he really tested my patience. First was the wrist rocket incident where he lanched rocks at the tent next door at the portal campground. (Should have searched his stuff for weapons). Then there was the begging for me to hike back to town and call for the helicopter to rescue him up at Meysan Lakes (altitude sickness). Next was the face to face bear encounter I had during the night sleeping out under the stars, as a result of the food he left out on the table. And finally was the rock pilling incident outside one of the bathroom doors at the portal. The camp host was so mad she wanted to call the sheriff in town. I promised not to ever hike with him again, only to recant and go again with the 60inchesTall group into Rock Creek Canyon. Now that he is older he no longer thinks hiking is fun. I guess we failed to give him a love for the mountains.

That's a good one AZClimber. Can't blame 'man' for the dinosaurs since he wasn't around to mess things up. I was thinking more along the lines of the buffalo, sea otters, abalone, california condor, etc. Yes, I realize they are not extinct. Guess I should have said endangered instead.

"What if everyone ditched school"
I guess we'd have more stupid threads like this one.
"what if everyone pissed in a creek"
Might not taste so good
"what if everyone burned ants with a magnifying glass as a kid"
Actually, that was fun
"what if everybody used this statement,everytime they tried to make a point"
I would expect specific examples to back up the statment. Calling something lame is not a valid arguement.

Markskor's definition of Folly is good. What I feel is sad is fellow hiker's endorsement of such a dangerous prank.

Kind regards,

Mark A. Patton

I've been in and out of this message board for the last 4+ years and it never ceases to amaze me of how idiotic the board gets at times. This IS one of those times. This thread was great until July 10 @ 8:10 am. Since then 16 of the last 20 posts on a thread that is supposed to leave you laughing have left you with a negative feeling, no matter what side of this little beef you come down on. With four summits under my belt I have seen some great stuff on the trail. Everytime I get ready to jump into a tread it seems to deteriorate just like this one and people start ripping each other. Each year there is one or two guys that destroy the pleasure of daily logging on to this board. DON"T BE THAT GUY! In the past the best way this board has delt with someone mucking up a thread is to just ignore them. If you have to do this just click the new topic tab and duke it out. In the past I have seen entire threads shut down and people banned because it just snowballs and gets out of hand. So I guess I am in it now too, rip me if you want. I will now try to get back to some serious follies with a new post of one of my many encounters on the trail.

GRINDER

About three years ago we are ripping down the mountain as we are always hiking Whitney for time. Somewhere between Mirror lake and Outpost camp we pass this guy standing on this kind of rock outcropping on the side of the trail with about a 6 or 8 foot drop below it. He a young guy, early twenties in apparent good physical condition. The guy is standing motionless, stiff as a board like a diver when he brings his hands down to his side just before he jumps. Its like rigor has set in on the guy. His mouth is hanging open and his eyes are absolutly glazed over. And no lie, the guy had an eight inch steam of snot hanging from his nose just as stiff as he was. Don't be that guy either!

GRINDER

Grinder - Have you ever seen that Jack In The Box commercial where the girl finally says "Just Go"..

Sorry, no see. But I did see a guy do an 18 mile Whitney training hike on San Jac wearing Teva sandals. At the time I was 39 and he was about 34. The guy has some foot problems from an old injury and real trouble finding boots that fit. He got a mile or two into the trail wearing some boots that he had been breaking in and they started ripping him up. So he pulls out the Tevas and does really well making the summit. This was kind of a test hike for us to see if we were compatable for an upcoming Whitney hike. So about half way down, its hot and sweaty, and the moisture on the sandals along with the dirt from the trail starts turning these things into sand paper. The guy is tough as nails though, ex 10th mountain division guy and he really wants to do Whit with me. So the last few miles of this thing the guys feet are a bloody mess and I'm really pushing hard to see if he's worth his salt and the guy doesn't slow down a bit! So a couple of months later we do Whit together, he has good boots and the first time he steps on the mountain he cranks this thing out like its nothing, round trip in 8:48. Great hiking partner!!!

GRINDER

Sure, we sometimes get value judgements and differences of option on things people do. But you got to admit..Some of the things on this link ...like MJJ and the lost woman on MR...and about 15 of the other funny entries are sure fun to read...launching backpacks, flaming stoves, shopping bags, smoking weed, barefoot hikers, lighting rods, rock in backpack revenge, scouts and scoutmasters etc. Keep em coming.

Having hiked with many friends and youth, I am always amazed at food choices people make. While I am counting every ounce I have seen way to much "take anything and everything" My last trip one of my group broke a fingernail..no problem as he whipped out fingernail clippers. I was suprised and yet not suprised...He had everything else you could imagine. Another trip one of the youth said he was having spaghetti for dinner.. Sure enough as he cooked up his spaghetti and removed from his pack a pint size glass jar of over the counter liquid pasta sauce. The next day he removed frozen pizza still in the box from his backpack. I have to admit he ate way better then me that trip. Other trips youth have opened their pack to reveal 25 candy bars, 1 pound of licorice and an assortment of other snack food...way more then you could eat in one trip. Another trip a young man whipped out a 1 pound block of orange cheese for his crackers. Sure was good. While off day hiking we saw a big black bird in camp.. As he flew away it seemed he had something orange in his mouth. Getting back to camp our fears were realized... The bird had finished off the cheese. Another trip the Scoutmaster opened his trunk for final packing. There was brown sack after brown sack full of this food and that food, still in the original boxes. He stuffed it all in his big pack, and the packs of his sons, only to forget the tent. (which would have come in handy during the next two days of rain). Last trip I listened to another group leader, telling me (against all my experience) we should take more food. I did and had to bring a bunch home. All of us take more then we need. But I have to admit...I have never seen anyone remove the big skillet..

Mjj's post reminds me of something that happened to us on the Mountaineers route a few years back. We had backpacked up to Iceberg lake and were coming down, after reaching the summit. We stopped and rested at Lower Boy Scout Lake and then packed up all of our stuff for the final section back to the car. As happens, our group started out together but began to spread out a little. At the top of the Ebersbacher ledges we stopped to wait for the second half of the group. After about 10 minutes I started back to see what happened to them. I couldn't see them anywere on the route back up to LBSL. Then I realized there was a group trying to climb the shelves on the south side of the river, lifting their backpacks up to get up on the ledges. I was thinking..."why would someone be over there?" Sure enough, the second half of our group had been seduced to leave the trail, go down & cross the river and attempt the south side (thinking it looked easier). Being unable to help them, we climbed down the Ebersbacher ledges and waited for them at the river crossing. After a long hard day I couldn't help but feel bad for them. The bush wacking the last 50 feet involved rustling in the bushes for quite a while until they popped out. When we met up again they didn't look happy.

Not a "whitney folly", but a sierra folly:

We encountered some tourists from finland at the pizza factory in Lone Pine. They had driven across death valley from vegas and said they were on the way to Fresno. They asked how the road was from Independence to Fresno ("you just drive west from Independence, right").......

We informed them of the options of heading south to cross the sierra at walker pass or tehachapi pass or of going north to cross at yosemite. Took them a few minutes to grasp that no roads cross the sierra between walker pass and yosemite....

This is a Sierra folly, but I think it is well worth mentioning here. Years ago when I was a boy scout we spent a week in the Ansel Adams Wilderness. On the last day of our trip we found a dead chpmunk in Red's Meadow and some of the younger scouts started to play with it. We told them it wasn't a good idea, but they didn't take heed. The chipmunk had recently died and the body was still soft and pliable. They took photos of themselves sitting with it, tossing it back and forth, etc. It was in pretty bad taste. About a week later one of the boys collapsed during football practice with a very high fever. He was rushed to the hospital and what at first they thought was heatstroke turned out of be buebonic plague. The lesson here was don't play with dead animals.

I didn't witness this first hand but I saw the guy and heard the story.
one of the cables early this season was down and hanging down the granite slab for 150' below the cable section. A man below the section of cables decides that instead of taking the switchbacks he is going to hand-over-hand it up the cable and the slab. He slipped, but had a good hold on the cable and dislocated his shoulder completely. The moral of this story is don't cut the switchbacks.

I have a friend that hiked to the summit as a boy scout some time in the 70s. Said he makes it to the top and was totally bummed because pearched at the summit was a big Coke machine. He said that Coke had flown it up there and filmed a commercial a few days earlier and had not flown it back out yet. I can kind of remember a Coke commercial with a bunch of people on mountain and an ariel shot pulling away as they all sang that 'I'd like to teach the world to sing' song. To make matters worse the thing was empty.

GRINDER

It's probaly just as well that the machine was empty. Have you ever shaken up a can of coke and opened it at high altitude? Those boy scouts could have had quite a coke fight on the summit.

In 1976 my sister and I would have won the award for Most Unprepared.

Mistake #1 was the big breakfast in Lone Pine. We were sure we'd never, ever be hungry again, so we packed little food. What little food we had, we fed to the cute chipmunks (we have since learned never to do that.)

Mistake #2 was getting to Trail Camp as fast as we could. Altitude sickness? What's that?

By the time the sun went down we were roaring sick, but ravenously hungry too. In 1976 the mountain was not well known and there were maybe 10 hikers at Trail Camp. We discussed begging, but we think they knew what we were up to because they gave us dirty looks like we were homeless folks or something. So we starved.

It was the longest, most miserable night anyone should have to experience. Not knowing that everything at Trail Camp was rock, we only brought paper-thin bamboo pads to lay on. we were so lucky it was a quiet, clear night. I was surprised that you could see the dawn begin to quicken in the east at 3:30AM.

At daybreak, we were going to try to hit the switchbacks, but we didn't know where they were.H*ll, we couldn't even find Mt. Whitney! Back then there were no books or maps and the 10 people that were there had abandoned us. There was not even the nice rock-lined trail leading to them like there is now. We didn't even know how many miles it was to the summit. We were so sick from altitude that it was like a slow-motion dream just to pack our stuff and leave.

That was the first overnight trip. I'm going back next Tuesday and doing it right.

Good Luck Sherry! You'll make it!

JJBB

Just wanted to bring the follies back to the top. I really enjoy it.

JJBB

That away Jimjoebillybob,

I'll help out to keep the follies coming. This one is about me. The first time I hiked Whitney I had altitude sickness really bad. I made the summit but I looked like a drunken sailor stumbling the whole way. I should have never left the portal. When we crossed the logs near Lone Pine Lake I was pathetic. The logs as you know are well over a foot wide, cut flat and all of a foot or two above the water. I went across those things like I was on a tight rope above the Grand Canyon, arms outstretched, each step very deliberate, one foot in front of the other, it was sad. It had to take at least two minutes to cross the things. I wish I could see it on film.

Grinder

Grinder,

About the Coke machine story...I'm reminded of that scene in Blazing Saddles:

"Someone's gotta go back and get a whole ****load of dimes!"