Fire and Flood

After leaving Los Angeles we drove about 250 miles north to a climbing area called the Needles, in Sequoia National Forest in the southern part of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The Needles consist of 150m high granite towers, which have names like "the Witch", "the Sorceror" and "the Magician". The rock is beautiful orange granite streaked with bright yellow lichen. It's at about 8,000 feet, so not too hot in the summer.

The Needles are also famous for the Needles Lookout, which is a building owned by the US Forest Service perched on the top of the biggest tower, the Magician. The purpose of the Lookout is to keep a watch for forest fires, and a Forest Service employee is stationed there during the summer months.

Forest fires are obviously a big issue in this bit of California - while walking in to the Needles we could see a big forest fire not far away, which we were told was covering an area of several thousand acres.

Lots of people had told us that the climbing at the Needles was brilliant. They weren't wrong. The towers are split by beautiful clean cracks which give really striking lines, which look really hard but aren't as hard as they look (like the climbers in this picture, who we think are on a 5.10b called Thin Ice)

We started off by doing a route called Igor Unchained, 5.9, which takes the crack system that splits the headwall in this picture

It was good but hard for 5.9 we thought - or maybe our crack climbing skills are a bit rusty. Unfortunately, Igor Unchained turned out to be the only route which we got done at the Needles, for a reason that we would never have thought of. When we walked in to climb on the second day, there was smoke coming out of the roof of the Lookout. As we passed the stairs at the foot of the Lookout we met a rather agitated young lad, who was the grandson of the woman who worked there. He told us that the roof was on fire, and the fire had been caused by them burning paper in their stove. Helicopters had already dropped seven huge bucketfuls of water on it, and he thought it was under control. He told us we should be OK going climbing. To get to the routes you have to pass right underneath the Lookout, but reassured by what he had said we carried on. A few minutes later we turned back to look at the Lookout, and while we were watching big flames engulfed it - it went up incredibly fast.

At this point we decided to get out of there - we could see that the building would disintegrate, and bits of burning wood would start falling down into the tinder dry forest below. The Lookout was in between us and the path back to where we had parked the van, and we didn't fancy getting cut off. We were influenced by the fact that we had no experience of forest fires, and no way of knowing whether or not it was sensible to stay in the area. We then had a slightly hairy walk back past the burning Lookout (we could hear the propane tanks exploding, and see bits of the building falling down the cliff above us). Once we got to a safe distance we met lots of fire fighters. They were glad that we had decided to leave, and told us that the area would be closed and evacuated. By this time there was smoke coming from the forest below the Lookout, so it looked like the fire might spread. There was no water anywhere close by (it is 3 miles to the nearest road) we couldn't see what the firefighters could do to put it out. There was definitely a certain irony in a fire being started by the person who was supposed to be responsible for keeping a lookout for forest fires.

We decided to leave the Needles, as we were told the area might be closed for several days. Before we left we went to visit a grove of giant Sequoias. They are amazing - it took my breath away to see a living tree that was so big and so old.

Then we drove round to the town of Lone Pine, at the base of Mount Whitney. Whitney is the highest mountain in the Lower 48 States, so is pretty popular. Access is regulated by a permit system, so we were pretty happy to be able to get a permit to walk in and camp overnight for the next day. We planned to walk in, camp, and then do the East Buttress to the summit the next day. This is a classic rock climb, about Hard Severe, and we really wanted to do it. However it wasn't to be - we were thwarted by the elements again. It rained all day the day before we were supposed to walk in, and when we got up the next morning to drive up to the trail head, we came up against this road block

Apparently the road had flooded, and both the road and all the trails up Whitney were closed. They were rescuing people off the mountain by helicopter, and expected it to be closed for at least the rest of the day.

Since then the weather has been bad for the last couple of days - not what we expected in Southern California. We've managed a bit of cragging while we wait for the weather to improve, and today we were reduced to going for a run in the rain - good altitude training as we were running at 10,000 feet! Hopefully we should get another shot at trying Mount Whitney over the next few days.

Ruth