Mt. Wrightson from south of Baldy Saddle
Written: April 21, 2023
Why even write about this?
I have hiked this trail more times than I can count or remember. I used to feel obligated to go to the summit of Wrightson, but now I feel almost a duty not to and to turn around after reaching Baldy Saddle. I am not going to let this "gotta go to the summit" pressure bully me. Besides that, Baldy Saddle is actually a fine summit of its own if you just look at it that way.
I was going to entitle this "old man in Madera Canyon". I decided not to. I am 70 years old now, and making the ascent to Baldy Saddle is a signficant measure of not being hopelessly old. For the young bucks reading this, just realize that you will face this someday. Each year you move a little more slowly. Each year something hurts just a little more and you wonder how long you will be able to keep on doing this.
The key is to keep on doing it. Other aging men (and women) tell me that they notice the same thing I do. You get in shape more slowly than you used to. And you get out of shape a lot faster than you get in shape. As I see it, the time will come when you simply don't get in any better shape, no matter how much you exercise. Then it will be a matter of keeping what you have, and at some point it will be a matter of retarding the inevitable decline.
The positive thing about it all is to be outdoors and enjoy being there. I like to spend more time chatting with people on the trail. When I was younger I wanted to hustle along with at best a brief greeting.
It is particularly interesting because it is in the Asteraceae (or "Sunflower" family. It doesn't look much like an Asteraceae and that is because it has only "disk" flowers and no ray flowers. If you don't know about all this it deserves some explaining. The typical Asteracea is a sunflower or daisy or aster, and what most people look at and consider a flower is actually an assemblage of many many flowers. In the case of the typical daisy like plant, each thing that looks like a petal is a single "ray flower" and the disk in the middle is lots of "disk flowers". Each disk flower will produce a single seed.
As for "odora", there are no ray flowers and only a very few disk flowers, but you will note (as in the picture) thaqt those disk flowers are gathered in a group. The stigma that sticks out of the flower (the botanists would say exserted) often splits into two parts, like the infamous "forked tongue", but without sinister implications.
By the time I got to Josephine Saddle, the temperature was 70 degrees and it just kept getting cooler. At 4:00 PM I was on Baldy saddle and it was 60 degrees with a brisk wind.
It had been windier the day (and night) before. I met a pair of guys who said they had camped at Baldy Saddle. They wished they had camped at some spot above Josephine Saddle where it was relatively sheltered. They did not go into details. I had thought of making this hike into an overnight, but was too lazy and unmotivated. I tell myself I can always go back next week. For that matter I could go back the next day, but of course I don't.
There are 33 switchbacks in the gully between Bellows spring and Baldy saddle. I always worry more about the descent than the ascent, but it went smoothly. Below Josephine saddle it was cool enough to make me put on a light jacket (Arcteryx Atom). It was 56 degrees when I got to my car at 7:00 PM.
Although I did not actually hike in the dark, I was prepared and expecting to do so. I like it. I would rather get a leisurely start and hike in the late afternoon and evening. If you think about it, in hotter weather, that puts you up high during the heat of the day, and on the way down you are hiking during the late afternoon and evening when the edge is off of the heat. All that aside, I really dislike early starts. And there is another benefit: if you are a photographer, the late afternoon light can be extraordinary.
10:16 roll out of my driveway 11:19 park the car at the trailhead 5472 elevation 12:37 snack stop at 6431 elevation 80F 1:28 Josephine saddle 7070 elevation 72F (pace 1.7 mi/h) 2.64 miles 2:10 lunch stop at 7600 (3.4 miles) 3:24 Bellows spring 8095, water running nearby 4:00 Baldy saddle 8715 (4.84 miles) 60F (pace 1.6 mi/h) 7:00 Back at my car at the trailhead 9.49 miles total, overall 1.7 mi/h paceMy pace is an interesting datapoint (for me as I judge my abilities). I get the pace from the "trip computer" on my Garmin GPS which ignores the time I spend stopped for whatever reason.
Pause and consider also that there are maniacs who participate in the Mt. Wrightson Massacre, where the name of the game is seeing how many times you can go up and down the mountain in a day (I guess during daylight hours). Doing it 3 times is respectable (amongst the maniacs).
What went right? I was outdoors on a nice day, had enough to eat and drink and more than enough clothing to be comfortable at all times. I finished the hike pretty much when I thought I would. The fact that I moved at 1.7 mi/hour without pushing extra hard and spent 2 hours "not moving" would be good for planning other day hikes.
What went wrong? Autofocus on my new camera is too auto and does what it wants rather than what I want, so I need to learn about settings that are more to my liking. On the descent, I followed the old road to the east parking lot, but my car was parked at the west lot. It is a short stroll from one to the other, so this is not a big deal. But it is annoying. The fix is to drop down one of the "stairs" that present themselves and wander through the maze like picnic area to get to the west lot.
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