The View was Worth the Climb

In a December 1961 newsletter, Jeanette Hardage wrote that the highlight of the family’s year was a pack trip taken with two burros in the high Sierras the previous August. While I’m not sure all of the participants relished it as much as Jeanette did, she called it “awe-inpsiring” and noted that “God’s handiwork was evident on all sides. We became exhausted and dirty and cold, learned a thing or two about burros—have you ever tried to urge a stubborn one down a glacier trail in the rain?—and enjoyed it thoroughly.”

Musing again on the trip in April 1962, Jeanette made the journal entry below. She had discovered that finding joy on the mountaintop can take hard labor and persistence.

“As we climbed the steep trail, utter exhaustion numbed me and I wondered at the infirmity of mind that had convinced me of the desirability of a pack trip. We were miles from civilization, miles from comfort. But then we reached the top of the pass. Dejection became elation; exhaustion gave way to exhilaration.

“For unnumbered miles around lay mountains whose tops seemed to point up to our pass. A thousand feet below lay a blue jewel receiving meltwaters from the snow that was packed into shadowy crevices of Sawtooth Peak’s* precipitous face. The sight was worth any amount of exhaustion.”

* Excerpted from Wikipedia: “The trailhead up to Sawtooth Peak starts in Mineral King. The trail up to the peak is 11.5 miles round trip and is rated difficult [note: the trailhead may have been more distant from the peak in 1961]. The last half-mile of the trail is mainly loose gravel and steep switchbacks. The base of the trail is at 7800 Ft elevation and climbs up to 12,400 Ft at the top of the pass.”