Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion FUN NEW GAME!

Hi Steve,
Thanks for unlocking, and for the complement on the pictures. Not too hard when the subject matter is so cooperative.

Pictures now included with original post. Not too surprising that these views are similar to Thousand Island Lake, and Garnet Lake. When we were deciding on doing this hike we seriously considered both of those destinations, but finally decided on Lake Ediza.

The month of April is here, good weather is returning, Whitney permits are being discussed, other hikes are being planned, and theoretically the readership of this board is increasing.

The winter doldrums are over. The participation in the nominating for the "Top Ten United States Day Hikes You Must Do" (TTUSDHYMD) had dwindled to zilch because of them. So I let nature take it's course and decided to wait until now to revive this important job!

Here is the original post in this thread which inaugurated the nominations thus far.

Looking back at the rules in the original post for this competition, it is apparent that # 9, # 11, and # 12 need to be revised, and are hereby replaced with the following:

9. The nominating period will commence upon posting of the original post and end on June 30, 2013.

11. An alphabetical list of all nominated day hikes will be maintained by Whitney Fan and posted in a new thread throughout the nominating period.

12. A voting period will extend from 12:00 AM July 1, 2013 until 12:00 AM August 1, 2013.

(Please review all the rules in the original posting if you are new to all this.)

So fellow Whitney Zone members, are we up for this or what? Although we have a nice selection of nominations thus far I feel it can be and should be improved -- I'm sure that lots of eminently qualified hikes are probably still missing. Previous nominators -- think some more! New participants -- join in the fun!

Let's have a robust three months of interest in nominations followed by the important final voting in July. Have we got enough of a base in membership on this board to get this done or not? The final results will only be as good as the participation in this warrants -- let's wind up with a GOOD and CREDIBLE listing of these hikes that all of us, including non-board members, can look up to and aspire to.

???

Uh.......OK.

The translation of "???" is . . .

It's been over a week since this thread was bumped up with the exhortation that, after winter and it's apparently allied lower interest in hiking and reading about hiking, lets' now get busy again with nominations.

Sadly, there has not been one.

Paradoxically, when the thread was first started, it and subsequent posts generated the 24 hikes that are currently nominated.

It is what it is (or will be). Will this board have the readership to make this whole thing viable? Or -- as it currently looks -- not?

I for one appreciate all nominations. I will consider attempting some of these hikes based on their proximity to me and how they suit my interests and abilities whether they are voted into the top ten or not. Thank you for this thread.

And I have several on the list planned for this summer! Trip reports will be forthcoming.

Any takers of Crow Pass be sure to let me know...

> Any takers of Crow Pass be sure to let me know...

Crow Pass would definitely be on my list if I were heading to Alaska. We're going north this summer but not THAT far.

This thread was bumped up on April 2 -- one day short of 3 weeks ago. The idea was to start some interest again in nominating hikes for eventual voting to see what this board thought constituted the Ten United States Day Hikes You Must Do (TUSDHYMD).

On April 11 I noted that no nominations had been made despite over a week having passed.

It is now April 22 and that fact remains -- no nominations in 20 days.

It appears that the initial enthusiasm for all this last fall was the limit of any interest.

As I said on April 11, it is what it is. It appears that although this board certainly has high membership, readership, and interest, it does not have high ENOUGH membership, readership, and interest to sustain the process and objective of finalizing a credible and authoritative TUSDHYMD.

It appears that a wider forum is necessary, and that this whole idea would have better traction if initiated and conducted by, for example, "Backpacker" magazine, or REI via in store promotion, or, well, I guess there could be a number of possibilities. But right now, again, not to this board's discredit so much as a fact of life -- not enough of a base to nominate and subsequently vote here.

It appears we should formally cancel the "contest". If we can't get nominations then we can't get votes once the nominations are finalized or, if we can, what value can they have with such apparently low interest?

Comments? Barring any brain storms to show me otherwise, I think it's best to cancel the process. We had some fun with what happened to date, and the nominated hikes are an interesting read for sure, but to pretend this can continue with the original intent is fighting reality, no?

It is what it is, Whitney Fan. I appreciate the trip write ups in the thread. I don't think there necessarily needs to be a "winner", since we are all individuals, and we each can pick from the list.

Message board readership has declined significantly over the past several years, most likely due to the emergence of Facebook and the availability of a large number of hiker forums.

But what we have here is a valuable source of ideas and information. It is good, all is well.

I think the situation is more one of timing. There are a lot of nominations in and a lot of discussion of them, but the voting is not until what, June? May be too late, now, but voting should follow immediately, at peak of interest and activity.

Also interesting note by Steve: Since I joined just over two years ago, WHA membership has gone from under 400 to over 1000. Intetesting that readership has gone down in the same period. Maybe the channel surfing attention span phenmenon at work here, but I think if voting had followed the initial spurt of nomination interest, you would have a very different result. Why not collate the nomination results and have a big splashy finale to the process, post a summary and hold the vote, before we are all off on the trail for the summer?

My favorite day hike that I ever did was Onion Valley to Kings Canyon Roads End and BACK in 23 hours 15 minutes. Somewhere around 44 miles and 9K of elevation gain for the day. (almost all of the gain is on the way back) I started at 12:01 am and was hallucinating in a light rain coming back over the pass. Not everyone's cup of tea.

One that's on my bucket list and has been done by many already is the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim. I've done as two day hikes, spending the night at the North Rim Lodge but it felt like we were cheating.

Forester Pass and back from Kings Canyon Roads End is a good warm up for more extreme day hikes. Its 42 miles and over 8k of gain.

Laura and I always talked about doing Whitney from Onion Valley in a day. She tried it and almost had it. I guess it's time for me to give it a go.

I won't be offended if none of mine are considered. My idea of a "day" hike isn't the same as other folks. I like to use all 24 hours in a day..............................DUG

Even though this has not garnered the level of interest I expected, it has resulted on several hikes on my horizon that otherwise would not have been there.

I second Salty's suggestion.

One other request. Would someone who has done Langley please nominate it, so I can "check it off" my list this summer?

Langley is on our list for this summer. If you want a good work out here's another favorite -

Happy Isles to Half Dome and then over to Cloud's Rest to look down at Half Down and back to Happy Isles.

This used to be our first hike of the season to work out the kinks until they started with the permits.........................................DUG

I've done half dome a number of times, but never cloud's rest. Did you do both on the same hike? Up half dome, back to the JMT and then on to Cloud's rest, and then back to Happy Isles? What was total distance?
Thanks,
John

Doing Cloud's Rest with Half Dome adds almost nine extra miles. Right around 24 total I think. It is over 7000 feet of gain if I remember correctly adding in the trip up to Half Dome and the drop back to the junction.

A good first hike of the season.................................DUG

Thanks DUG,
Very similar stats to Whitney Main Trail. Comparable distance, but lower altitude. Guess I need to add Cloud's Rest from either Happy Isles or Tioga road to my list. If from Happy Isles I'll likely skip Half Dome, if for no other reason than the permit requirement.
John

The Whitneyish numbers are why we used it as an opening hike. Whitney was usually our second hike before we moved on to bigger and slightly dumber things. We would finish up in late Sept with a hike that was 48 hours long. The shortest one of those was Whitney from Kings Canyon Roads End.

Then there was Whitney from Roads End via Colby when I carried two cans of cake frosting for food.

We did Whitney from Mineral King once.

And our last hike together was a 72 mile loop of Kings Canyon that went horribly bad.

Now I hike with my son and don't feel he is ready for 20+ straight hours. Maybe next year................DUG