When on a long road trip and especially while starving, one of the nicest experiences one can have is to be greeted by a friendly waiter who serves good food and regales you with some local legends. We met one such person at a nice Bakery/Restaurant in Lone Pine, California. I can’t recall what I ate but it was well done and presented. The onion rings were to die for. More than that, I recall the affable waiter who recounted how he lived in Dallas for sometime in the 1970s before moving westward and ended up living near Alabama Hills. He seemed genuinely happy with the decision. More than that, we had a picturesque view of a mountain out the window and I asked him if that was Mt. Whitney. He told us that it was actually Mt. Langley and showed where Mt. Whitney was. He then said that the first guy who was trying to scale Mt. Whitney climbed Mt. Langley instead. But the first summiteer of Mt. Whitney was actually a drunk local fisherman who took took a bet to climb Mt. Whitney and did so before lunch. Now that is the word of mouth story. The story that is published goes this way: In July 1864, the members of the California Geological Survey named the peak after Josiah Whitney, the State Geologist of California and benefactor of the survey. During the same expedition, geologist Clarence King attempted to climb Whitney from its west side, but stopped just short. In 1871, King returned to climb what he believed to be Whitney, but having taken a different approach, he actually summited nearby Mount Langley. Upon learning of his mistake in 1873, King finally completed his own first ascent of Whitney, but did so a month too late to claim the first recorded ascent. Just a month earlier, on August 18, 1873, Charles Begole, A. H. Johnson, and John Lucas, all of nearby Lone Pine, had become the first to reach the highest summit in the contiguous United States. As they climbed the mountain during a fishing trip to nearby Kern Canyon, they called the mountain “Fisherman's Peak”. In the picture you see Mt. Whitney framed by the Mobius Arch. The bright light on top of the peak is actually Jupiter that was setting. Jupiter which is usually the second brightest object in the sky after the moon was looking like it is usual very big star appearance until the moment it just started to go behind the mountain. I am not sure if it was the partial obscuring of the planet but Jupiter did balloon up before it disappeared behind the tallest mountain in the Sierra Nevada range and the highest summit in the contiguous United States. Sony a7RII Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 41 exposures ISO 10000, 25mm 10s at f/2.8 Four Horizontal Frames stitched into Panorama Each Frame median stacked with multiple identical images to improve Signal to Noise Ratio Processed in Capture One Pro and Adobe Photoshop
