Attempt 1
Back in 2024, I was kicking around on the eastside for about a month. Vaguely training for the CDT, but really I just wanted to spend some time hitching, and hiking around the Sierra. Those were good times, when I started to really get into the SPS list, and every mountain I could see was a goal. No car, no long term plans, just a backpack and vague dreams. Camping outside of Bishop in the brush, and then catching a ride up the alluvials, to the base of the mountains on the western horizon. Charging up the mountains with reckless abandon. Lungs burning, legs burning, spirit on fire. I got in real Sierra shape for the first time. 5k, 6k, 7k vert, it became a non-concern. Snow fields became chutes and ladders, connecting me to the hidden paradise of the early-season high country. Of course, I didn’t see anyone up there.
I bought a bag salad and a five dollar pair of shoes in Bishop. A size too small, but I was not one to say no to almost brand new Hokas for $5. I hitched down to Lone Pine, and up the massive switchbacks up to Cottonwood lakes, bid farewell to the eastside. I hiked across the range, hitting a half dozen or so more peaks along the way, again seeing no one but my friend Matt, when we rendezvoused on some forgotten trail in the middle of the range. I was flying too close to the sun though. After a morning ascent of a peak, I was sure it would be much quicker to glissade down. Quickly, I found myself picking up speed. “Arrest!” Matt yelled. I half heartedly swung my axe to try to brake to no avail. “Arrest, Arrest!”, Matt yelled with more urgency. Just as I was accelerating towards a massive boulder field. I committed fully now, flipping around, and digging my ungloved hands into the icy morning snow, skidding to a halt mere feet before the sharp rocks. I cut deep gashes in both hands in exchange for avoiding a high-speed trip across the rocky cheese grater below.
I limped over a couple more peaks with Matt. In addition to the open wounds on both hands, the five dollar shoes that seemed like such a good deal, were now slowly tearing apart my feet. The rubbing and grinding was starting to form large blisters, and I knew no way to stop the pain but to grit and bare it. Matt and I finished our last two peaks, and settled in in the shade of a nice tree in the deep valley of Mineral King. Matt put some pasta on in his van, and we sat down to relax a bit, and plan one more hike. We had one more day together before heading back down to earth. Earlier, we had thought of doing a massive 10k plus vert day linking up Eisen and Lippincott, but with the deteriorating condition of my body, this seemed like a stretch. We gazed north at the snow covered land, and the snow fields no longer looked like chutes and ladders. We set our sights instead to the east on an unassuming looking dome in the forest called Homers Nose. We knew little about it, but heard rumors it was a formidable bushwhack. How bad could it be, I wondered?
As we sat down to eat, a foolish man so foolish he was perhaps wise, appeared out of nowhere. A twinkle in his eye betrayed his delight in finding a captive audience for his rambling. He offered us a steady stream of drugs and all sorts of other vices which we repeatedly declined. The man seemed to have broken all of the rules in the park. Allegedly he had climbed all the peaks when he was only a few years old. He had dirtbiked deep into the wilderness. He had left his wife, and lied to her to come out here, to try to sleep with another woman. But despite all this, it was all somehow his wife’s fault. The stories got crazier and crazier, and finally we steered the conversation back to the nearby peaks. “You two boys going up Homer’s Nose?”, he asked incredulously, “that one is gnarly, better take some blow” he said as he made a snorting gesture with his nose. As we drove away, he once again offered us to join him in his 24 hour bender, and we once again politely declined.
Perhaps repelled by the man’s slobbishness we decided to attempt the nose, or perhaps some small part of us believed the wild man had done it and our egos were offended into hiking it too
It was 3:45 am the next day and our alarms blared. We were on the trail by 4, walking through an abandoned looking campground filled with a sleeping CCC crew and tons of poison oak. We crossed the South Fork of the Kaweah on a bridge, and soon set off up a steep valley. The beta told us to go up a steep ravine, filled with boulders and brush. The arroyo was dry, but we were soon swimming through the poison oak both fully resigned to an itchy few weeks ahead. Already my blisters were aching, and I dreaded the thought of my bloody hand becoming infected with poison oak. The cold mountain air was replaced with the central valley heat. Even before the sun rose, the day already had the makings of a scorcher.
The beta told us to continue up the ravine for a half mile or so until we reached a huge boulder. Just a few hundred feet, we saw what to us was a huge boulder. The only way around was to scramble up some very loose hillside while crawling through poison oak. As we made our way up the draignage, we were greeted with huge boulder after huge boulder. While my motivation was nearing zero, I never questioned Matt’s. A 6ft 6 horse of a man, we had pushed through many obstacles in the mountains together over the years, and never did a hint of doubt cross his face. In my mind, his motivation for any endeavor we set out on was never in question, and remains to never be in question. Years later, I can’t imagine how such a conversation would have started between us, but suddenly, both of us knew the other’s heart wasn’t really in it, and that was all it took to turn around.
So at the base of the fourth boulder or so, still a long ways off from the huge boulder, and 5,000 feet or so below the summit, we turned around. We slid back downstream through the poison oak, and crossed the South Fork around sunrise. We walked back through the CCC camp, and tiptoed so as not to wake the sleeping corps. The taste of defeat still sits bitter in my mouth years later. The taste I felt as we wound our way back down the road, through the hot central valley, back to the world of strip malls, and fast food restaurants and homelessness. The trance I had been in up in the mountains was surely gone now. The only solace in all of this, I thought to myself then, is I knew it would feel good to climb that damn mountain one day.
Attempt 2
Two years later, Matt and I had schemed a window to attempt the peak again. It was a narrow window for both of us, but we both knew that we would take it. Again, in my head, Matt’s motivation was never in question. Mine certainly was though. Two weeks prior while diving for a frisbee in a pick-up game of ultimate I smashed my head hard on the grass. I caught the frisbee, but I also felt concussion symptoms that were stubbornly sticking around. After many long weeks of teaching second grade, I was exhausted, and I had some sort of perpetual cold that I had picked up from the kids. As soon as school got out Friday, I got in my car for the 6 hour drive to Homer’s Nose. As I drove up 395, my first time driving since the concussion two weeks prior, I was immediately filled with dread that driving was a bad idea. My head was spinning, and I did not feel well. The bitter taste of defeat began to creep in, and I drove on over the mountains and into the sunset. Back in the central valley now, I resupplied at a Walmart to escape the 100 degree nighttime heat. As I rounded the final few corners to the trailhead, I realized that I felt even worse than I had two years prior. I asked Matt for another 30 minutes of sleep, and we pushed our alarms back to 4:30am.
I hadn’t walked much since the concussion. I certainly felt a little off balance. Matt had a hard time of it getting to the trailhead as well, between work and family obligations. But as soon as we started hiking, I had no doubt we would reach the summit. We walked through the camp. The CCC was gone and it looked much the same. We crossed the South Fork of the Kaweah River on the bridge. This time instead of heading up the ravine though, we followed the adjacent ridge. Getting to this ridge took a lot of hiking through dense poison oak. The ridge was very steep and grassy, but the going was good compared to the ravine. We waded through the at times chest deep bush and grass and oak. Eventually the grass relented to merely knee deep, and we began to make excellent progress. Higher up on the mountain as well, the going continued to be slow but not impossible. The final few 1,000 feet felt downright easy.
Soon the angle grew more and more gradual. I refused to believe we were on the summit, yet there we were all those years later. The nose and brow are truly breathtaking, a massive gnarled hunk of granite twisted over itself in a way that doesn’t look real. The cliff is so steep that the contours cross over themselves. We took in the view, and then headed down. Miles and miles of brush, poison oak, up over and around boulders. This felt nothing like hiking in the high sierra. As we neared the bottom, each step felt immensely uncomfortable. Our bodies were covered in hundreds of burs. I desperately wanted to itch everywhere, and the temperature grew hotter and hotter as we descended to below 4,000 feet.
Finally, we were dipping our bodies in the wonderfully cold South Fork, trying in vain to wash off all the poison oak. I bid Matt adieu, family obligations would dictate he wouldn’t be able to hike with me for a while, but this would certainly be a memorable hike to end on.
In the ensuing weeks I developed poison oak over most of my body, it itched and itched. Poison oak will itch for a few weeks and go away, so I didn’t mind it much at all. I felt free from a much bigger itch that had been gnawing at me for the last two years. Free from the itch of turning around on Homer’s Nose.
Anthony Ottati 