Oh, that satellite phone call

This one is hilarious when you consider I was trying to call my editor at sundown and wound up calling my own phone at work.

I immediately hung up after the recording, called my wife and asked her to tell the editors about the call. Which she did. That's the last I heard of the recording.

Never saw it on the blog. Maybe it's there. I'm tired of searching. These things are supposed to be easier to find. Anyway, I kept the recording on my phone.

The photo above is actually my last shot of the day from below Lamarck Col, looking east into the Owens Valley.

Here's the call:

6:50 p.m. Sept. 7


Hello, I accidentally called my own voice mail. This is Mark Grossi.

I'm at 12,600 feet (wind blasting and voice quivering in the cold.) We're camped below Lamarck Col (which is the crest of the Sierra where the wind is howling and the world is primitive. Boulders everywhere. Dirty ice that has been sitting there for decades, perhaps centuries.)

(I've been hiking all day, climbing several miles straight up with the weight of a 4-year-old on my back. I'm basically comatose. But I'm determined to have a good time with this.)

It's Sunday night. Mark and I went a lot farther than we thought we would. It was a good idea. While the trail system is easily passable, it is hard to understand. (The last sentence makes positively no sense. Here's the explanation: We would have been lost the minute we left Upper Lamarck Lake. We were going to stop for the night at the lake. Instead, we met author Peter Stekel and his hiking partner, Michele, who guided us up to the crest.)

Went about 3300 3400 feet vertical over 5.5 miles. It was a long haul.

The sun is going down, so we're going to eat our dinner, go to sleep and tomorrow climb over the top and go see Mount Mendel.

(At this point, I remember wanting to say something clever. The only line that came to me was a moronic "there's no Starbucks up here. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" I double clutched and punched out of the phone call. Pathetic.)