World

Midlife Madness

Buoyed by the
challenge,
Beaumont docs
scale Mt. Whitney.

Above: Dave Cohen and Jeff

Wilner at their base camp at

11,300 feet by Upper Boy Scout
Lake on Mt. Whitney

26

March 11 2010

Dave Cohen

Special to the Jewish News

I

n the summer of 2008, my friend Jeff
Wilner and I started kicking around
the idea of climbing a mountain. It
was an odd thought. We are two middle-
aged, Jewish anesthesiologists working at
Royal Oak-based Beaumont Hospital and
living in suburbia with no high-altitude or
climbing experience whatsoever.
However, both of us have always been
fascinated by stories of challenge and sur-
vival in the mountains. Basically, we were
a couple of armchair adventurers looking
for a cool trip.
Since we were pretty sure this was
going to be a "one and done" venture, we
decided to aim high (literally) and chose
Mt. Whitney in the Sierra Nevadas of
California; it is the highest mountain in

the continental United States at 14,505
feet. We elected to make our attempt via
the challenging Mountaineer's Route rath-
er than the more commonly traveled main
Mt. Whitney Trail, which is a walk-up trail.
The Mountaineer's Route would involve
some real climbing and we arranged a
guide through Sierra Mountaineering
International. The agency secured a per-
mit for the climb early in 2009 and we
began serious conditioning. This included
lots of walking around hilly neighbor-
hoods with heavy backpacks and drawing
the stares of our neighbors.
We hadn't camped out since we were
kids, so we had to learn a lot of outdoorsy
stuff, including Mt. Whitney's policy of
"leave no trace behind." This included
the use of a "WAG bag',' which is a special
plastic bag to pack out solid human waste.
This is one bag you want to keep tightly

sealed when carrying down the mountain.

Heading Out
Our wives made sure that our life insurance
was paid and said, "Have fun sleeping on a
rock and pooping in a bag." Our trip began
with a flight to Las Vegas on Sept. 11, 2009,
and a drive through Death Valley to the
Sierra Nevada Mountains. This afforded us
the unique opportunity to be at both the
lowest (282 feet below sea level) and high-
est points in the continental United States
on the same trip.
After two days of easy hiking above
10,000 feet to acclimatize, we met our
guide, Deb Leyh, who proceeded to ruth-
lessly pare down our overstuffed backpacks
to the essential equipment. We started on
the trail and soon noted the signs empha-
sizing that the Mountaineer's Route is not
to be taken lightly.