The best mountain I have ever climbed was Mt.Whitney. However, I remember Mt. Dana more often. I climbed Mt. Dana to acclimatize two days before I climbed Mt.Whitney. Because the purpose of our trip was Mt. Whitney, I was not very excited about climbing Mt.Dana. I know that responsible hikers should always prepare for the trails they plan to hike, but I had been too lazy to print out the trail map of Mt.Dana. Another reason I thought I didn’t need to do such preparation was that our leader had done the same trip six years in a row with exactly the same itinerary. So I was planning to follow him and actually I did follow him. It was quite an interesting trail. During the first half, we were able to see a lot of plants and flowers that were specific for high altitudes. On the last half of the trail were only rocks because plants couldn’t survive in the higher altitude. There were no obvious trails through the rocks although there were some cairns and flags to show hikers a good path to the summit. I really like this primitive kind of trail. It was stereotypic Eastern Sierra summer scenery; bone dry, brown, and quiet, with strong sunlight. The higher we climbed, the thinner the air became. That made it harder for us to breathe and we stopped talking. I knew that it was only six miles to the crest, but I couldn’t see the top. I felt like it would take forever to reach the top. That made me psychologically exhausted. At the same time, I got more time to think by myself. It was hard but I really like this solitude for some reason. When I finally reached the summit, I forgot all the pain. Surprisingly, I was able to see the whole Mono Lake from the top. I had been to Mono Lake but never saw all the lake at one time. It was the most beautiful lake I had ever seen. Because I had not looked up any photos from the summit of Mt. Dana, I was able to be surprised by the scenery. Nature rewards me with great scenery and several kinds of emotion that I never have in daily life. This is the reason I can’t stop climbing mountains. Some people believe that mountains have some spiritual power and some places such as Mt. Shasta are known as power spots. I still don’t really understand or feel that kind of power, but I got a sense of mountain’s strength a little.
