THE FAT LADY DOESN'T SINK 'TILL SUNSET (part two)

Editor’s note: This serial material is nowhere close to finished, glad to say. Even the title has changed, as you can see, and the number of parts may soon be some integer other than five. Always a process. If you enjoy it half as much as me you’re doing fine.Soaring a camera is about the most fun you can have while surrounded by rocks, if you favor a convoluted challenge. Unlike lenses rigged to drones that can park anywhere and gaze around, ours is mounted in the nose of a projectile that cannot move any slower than highway speed. We compose scenes focused less on the present than what’s unfolding seconds ahead, dodging deadly obstacles everywhere while working not only contours of lift and sink but whorls of wind over obstacles and around sharp corners. It’s heady stuff, and safe only if we maintain a carefully measured aggression.After Tango Whiskey leaves us we spoiler down to the broad summit of Mt. Whitney, highest in the 48, and swing around to wave back at exhausted climbers there, then dive off its vertical east face into a most inviting oblivion. Half a mile below, the deep amphitheater of couloirs, stone parapets and saddle top mesas is littered with circular lakes and rorschach patches of old snow. But all of that’s too low at first, so we zoom back up to tackle the second highest ground, exotic Pinnacle Ridge.Its west slope is a vast 45-degree pitch of naked rock, east face essentially vertical. At the upper end, what’s called Keeler Needle is in fact two enormous granite fangs jutting skyward, separated from each other and from Whitney itself by twin elevator shafts a thousand feet deep. Matched pairs of cliffs loom face-on in topologic embrace, inches too close for maneuvering, but perfect to dart between in steeep banks!Below on our right rises an infamous foot trail toward the highest rock of all. Below on our left, space. South from here the crest amounts to a mile-long cavalcade of gothic spires in every shape and size. Running it, we cross over and back yards above the smaller spikes, cutting around big ones like ski gates, slaloming side to side. Six Flags got nothin’ on this!The visual orgy continues in all directions, too much glory to fully grasp, or ever stuff into a camera. Our main question is which party we should hurry to next that offers a sure way out. Both angels say stick with the steeps, so that’s what we do. (So rarely they agree!)After gliding lower each direction beside this same fluted wall we’re set to attack our shadow on the snowfield above a two-mile high lake. Surprise surprise though, aiming the camera at our shadow points us down… So that shot doesn’t work — but leaves us in perfect position for a nap-of-the-earth escape across the sparkling lake, up through a flattish boulder field past more waving climbers, over a lip and off another precipice atop the maze of bedrock canyons that tumble down to Whitney Portal.No really. Still my freekin’ heart!But now that we’ve frittered a mile of height our shadow is suddenly swallowed by that of a large newly formed cumulus we’d been too busy to notice. Looking up and around, we realize it’s one of many. The whole area is subsiding and we need to bolt.Reaching sunny ground will cost even more precious altitude, yet be essential if we hope to make it home. And we do. Either way, the sooner we get there and climb the quicker we can be back up here where the fun is.All true except the ‘quicker’ part…TO BE CONTINUED