Lone Pine

[Subdeacon Joe]

[Big Sage, SASS #49891 Life]

Been up this trail to the top of Whitney many times. When I was 18, I hiked the John Muir Trail with 2 friends from start to finish. Took 2 months and we had a blast.

[Diego Kid #4631]

I have six trips to the top. Four in one day. 

[Creeker, SASS #43022]

Mount Whitney was one of my Dads favorite places.

We have many many pictures of Monkey Rock in various permutations or decor.

 

When my Dad passed after a long illness (brain cancer) that took the man that we knew away from us long before his body failed - it was on Mount Whitney that Desert Scorpion and I finally mourned.

 

Sitting on a large flat rock watching the water flow down the mountain broke something in both of us and we simply sat there; arms around each other and cried.

 

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Beyond that, Lone Pine is also home to a very cool movie museum that chronicles the hundreds (if not thousands) of movies and tv shows filmed in the surrounding area. (the Alabama hills) from Randolph Scott movies to Star Trek to Tremors to Iron Man.

A fair amount of western movie memorabilia including props, guns and leather - including the Dentist Wagon from Django.

 

Surrounding the Lone Pine area is (or was) also a fish hatchery that was being converted to a museum.

 

And nearby is a reminder of our failures in the treatment of our own citizens during wartime - the Japanese internment camp of Manzanar.

This is now a museum with a mixture of original buildings, reconstructions and history - our guide thru the camp was an elderly man of Japanese descent who had as a child been interred within this same camp.

I have rarely been as struck emotionally as I was that day being able to touch the history of that place, hearing the words of an adult man still haunted by the wounds of his childhood and what it represented - and the vigilance required to never allow that to occur again.

 

If the opportunity arises - I would recommend to every American a visit.

[Caladisi kid]

The Whitney Portal area is a great place with lots of memories for me.  I spent a lot of time climbing and hiking that area since the 1970's.   I have been to the top of Whitney 3 times, 2 in winter by the mountaineers route and once in summer by the East Face, never up the trail, only down it. Maybe someday again.