The Machinery of Night

Posted 6:17 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Mt. Whitney

Mt. Whitney, California, Aug. 1995

From the August 1995 trip, which began in Yosemite, stopped off at Mono Lake, and finished at Death Valley (last week's Foto Friday).

Mt. Whitney is the highest peak in the continental U.S. (The highest peak in North America is Mt. McKinley, in Alaska, and the highest in the Western Hemisphere is Aconcagua, in Argentina. Wikipedia has many fascinating tidbits about Mt. Whitney, some of which are probably true. It also has pictures better than mine, damn them.)

This is the way the mountain looks from the town of Lone Pine (which is not to be confused with Big Pine, just up the road a piece) -- or, to be specific, the second floor of our motel in Lone Pine. When I scanned these pictures yesterday, I was disappointed to find faint horizontal lines across the lower part of the picture. Were they some sort of scratches on the negative? Or could they be roads? One of them kind of looks like a road on a distant mountain.

On close examination they revealed themselves to be...power lines. I was too lazy to edit them out.

Mt. Whitney is within Sequoia National Park, but you can't see it from the normal park hangouts or views (like Moro Rock -- although I think there's an arrow up there which points in Mt. Whitney's direction).

Labels: California, Foto Friday