Mount Dana
Hike Review:
The hike to Mount Dana is pretty hardcore.
I gained more than 3000 feet of elevation in less than 3 miles of hiking. This took me about 3 hours to do.
The trail is mostly walking up steep scree fields, with the trail defined by smaller bits of rock snaking its way to the top of the mountain.
There’s almost no shade.
Near the top, it gets very steep and pretty scary for me, given my fear of heights.
What I Learned:
As much as I feel strong, I’m still a slow hiker. I was passed by much older folks on the way to the summit (though I kept pace with him until the peak). My leg muscles felt fine, but it was the lack of oxygen. A fellow at the top commented that I was seriously sucking air as I arrived at the peak.
I really should eat a breakfast when I’m doing serious hiking. Only eating snacks until 4pm is just stupid.
Because I had to hike off-trail on the way back (due to the aborted attempt on Mount Gibbs), I had lots of worries about the wind and path-finding. Thankfully, I didn’t have much issues picking up feint animal trails and lightly used trails to get to established trails. However, at least for me, off trail hiking takes more than double the time I would have taken if I had hiked a trail.
Someone stole my bear container that I had placed in the trees next to the road! I was sure that it would be there when I got back, but alas, it was gone. It had my allergy medication, soap, and toothbrush—all which I had to restock for $50+ at the town of Mammoth.
Fears Faced
Altitude Sickness—I was a bit worried about altitude sickness, since 24 hours before the start of the hike, I had been at sea level. The headache slowly built up starting around 12000 ft, and never went away until I dropped down to about 10000 ft.
Fear of heights—The last 1/2 mile of the hike to the summit of Mount Dana is very steep and I felt my fear of heights building, with the crescendo coming at the peak, where on the east side, the mountain just drops away. Still, with me using up my valuable mental strength in dealing with my fear of heights, it got to me as I just didn’t feel good about Mount Gibbs.
Media Consumed:
Pachinko—finished.
Tell Me What You Want—finished.
The Korean War
Friends Made:
There were lots of friendly faces at the summit. One of them was a Dodgers fan who thanked me for trading Mookie Betts to them.
What Happened?
8.8 miles, 7 hrs 19 mins, 3606 ft of ascent
I had seen this mountain earlier this year when I attempted to summit Mount Conness and I thought it was a beautiful mountain (actually, what I saw was the Dana Plateau). I also knew that Venkat had summited this mountain earlier in the year, so I thought it’d be great to hike it.
I started much later than I’d liked, but I still liked my chances of it, since I felt so strong. I started around 8am, and found myself over taken by a friendly hiker. He seemed to jet ahead of me, but I kept closing the gap, such that at the summit, I was only about 10 feet behind him. I had more thoughts during the ascent, but really, it was just super steep hiking, and it was difficult—I didn’t have much thoughts past putting one of my feet ahead of the other.
Actually, I did have one thought on the way up thanks to the Tell Me What You Want book, which is that, I think I like hiking because the pain of it (without suffering) helps me stay in the present. That the difficulty allows me to focus on the now instead of my usual thinking habits of reminiscing the past or thinking about the future.
At the summit of Mount Dana, even with a slight headache, I made the choice of continuing on to Mount Gibbs. As I hiked down the other side of Mount Dana, I found that even though I was going downhill, due to the steepness, I was hiking as slow as I had hiked up the mountain. After an hour of hiking (and some class 2 moves), I found myself in the gully between Mount Dana and Mount Gibbs. The winds were fierce and I just felt crappy. I was feeling doubt about how well I could handle the steep-looking ascent on the final section up to Gibbs and I just didn’t feel great about how steep the down-hike looked. Even with that, I pushed on and started on the ascent of the gentle and windy gully. But then, the headache that had accompanied for the past two hours got much worse, and this made me stop and turn around. I was sure this was altitude sickness, so I chose to lose altitude as fast as I could by splitting the gully and following the Dana Fork.
After a better-than-expected hike, I found the Mono Pass Trail, and hiked back on Tioga Pass towards the east gate, where I had parked my car. I was pissed when my bear container was missing, but I didn’t linger long as I was hungry and I was going to eat some world famous fish tacos.