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There was plenty of firewood at hand and Niles soon had the tea water sizzling in a pound coffee can-one of two that constituted our entire set of cooking utensils. A pound coffee can, with its broad bottom, allows food to heat quickly, is about the right size for a one-dish hot meal for two, and is expendable. We long ago reneged at bringiing home blackened pots to clean.
Raindrops hissed on our fire and spattered into our chowder-a dish containing dehydrated corn, potatoes, milk, onions and seasonings. At this elevation it required about a half hour's simmering. Our ounce packages of pre-cooked dehydrated beef being new to us, we nibbled right out of the package. It tasted so good we sprinkled the remainder on top of the chowder after dishing it up, rather than dumping it into the pot and losing sight of it. A sauce of diced apricots (we cooked enough for breakfast, too) made a fine dessert.
Our entire dinner - including tea and sugar- only weighed six ounces per serving in our knapsacks. Improved dehydrated foods like these, along with plastic shelters, down sleeping bags and nylon parkas, have revolutionized knapsacking. Today you can go into the mountains for a long week end with less than 20 pounds on your back and be better equipped than was the knapsacker of 15 years ago who carried 50 pounds.
Now and again, during our meal, showers sent us running for our plastic shelter. Clouds hung low when we
After a breakfast of coffee, frosted flakes with powdered milk and the left-over apricot sauce, we joined the group on the trail. The hikers left most of their gear in camp, I carried a lunch, quart of water, parka, first aid and camera.
Thin ice edged the lake in places, and most of us were puffing when we clambered up the slope beyond the lake. Large snow fields were numerous now, and the spruce was becoming more and more scrubby in this "alpine island."
On top of the ridge we found remnants of an old trail used more than a hundred years ago when the top of Wheeler Peak served as a heliograph station. The flashing mirrors of the heliograph sent messages in Morse code before the telegraph came into use. These messages were relayed as far as 200 miles-from one mountaintop to another. Wheeler was an intermediate station between Mt. Nebo in Utah and an unknown peak to the west. Historians have pretty much neglected this form of early-day communication.
Although the old heliograph trail appeared and disappeared, we needed no path to the summit of Wheeler. We followed the backbone of the ridge all the way. At 12,000 feet we were breathing hard, barely putting one foot in front of the other. Patches of pink phlox and white phlox seemed to find the thin air invigorating. There was a bite in the wind that came over the ridge in little puffs to slap us in the face. We stopped to put on our wraps. As noon approached, clouds were gathering about us.
At 13,000 feet lavender-blue polemonium hugged the rocks. Looking back over our route the ridge curved down to a snow-corniced edge above Stella Lake. To the right Teresa Lake had come into view. Far beyond Lehman Creek Canyon the highway threaded the flat toward Sacramento Pass to the northwest.
On top of Wheeler we found remnants of the old stone walls of the heliograph station. The attendant's job must have been a cold one. For years after the station was abandoned a little wood stove had remained in the shelter until an "antique lover" hauled it away.
Eager to glimpse Matthes Glacier, we edged as close as we dared to the 2000-foot precipice that overhangs the cirque. All we could see of the glacier from this vantage point was a ragged edge of snow on the ice mass far side. To properly view the glacier you have to make a different approach, perhaps over the rugged ridge above Teresa Lake-and the best time to do this is in September after the year's fresh snow has melted off of the crevasses, fresh moraines and bergschrund.
When we returned to the summit it was snowing-in the very heart of the Desert Southwest-on the Fourth of July! --END
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DESERT MAGAZINE