• AT HAND: Deuce Lee, The Big Dipper
• LOCATION: South Lake Trail/Dusy Basin to Whitney Portal, CA
• DATES: July 6-12, 2012
• STATS: 6 days/5 nights, 95.4 miles – 22, 930 feet EG

The Valley Fudge is wider, deeper, and more accessible than any other. It’s comfortable, accommodating, dazzlingly beautiful on the surface, and propped up by a flimsy plastic carbon copy underneath. It’s a washed-out, decolorized false mimetic of meaning. It’s a Biggie Bag, a pair of noise canceling headphones, a “like” button, a Narcan-interrupted fever dream, literally “The Entertainment.” It offers all the Gatorade you can drink, decorative rocks covered in lead paint slogans rife with environmental idealism, a morass of stucco quicksand engineered to halt your personal progress. The remedy exists in the increasingly rare pockets that remain far away from the Valley, where existence supplants ownership and contemplation rises above assimilation.

In the continental USofA you can’t rise any higher than Mt. Whitney. At the top you’re treated to a stunning view of the Owen’s Valley below, and all the fudge beyond it. If you listen carefully you can hear the drone of a lawnmower, cutting the grass and making it look pretty.

Of consequence: Props to the freeway maintainers; fireside tales of extraordinary undraped exploits; wag bag tent nightmares; lakes shaped like instruments; matching fleece fashion statements; running 6,000 feet downward; you are who you say you are.