You can't cry. You have to keep going.

What is that wildflower? A sky pilot.

Am I shivering? Not yet.

I don't have hypothermia or at least I don't think

I do but can I be sure?

How will I know when I have it? I'm going to die.

I can't die. I don't want to. My fingers are frostbitten. I can slip so easily and fall.

I can survive if I have to.

But what if I'm not supposed to....

SEPTEMBER 7--Tropical Storm Norman dumped a blizzard on California's Sierra Nevadas. Its toll next day: four people dead, 17 missing. Too easily I could have been a fifth or an 18th. As it was, I watched two people dying.

Ironically, like most backpackers, I'd set out 26 days before seeking the true wilderness experience. It eluded me. After 200 miles, after carrying more than half my weight, after beginning alone, all I knew was a lot of pain, too many people and a scenery spectacular in its extremes but too barren to be beautiful.

The trail I was on, the John Muir Trail, is a killer. It contains more high passes than any other established trail in the continental U.S. At times it seems nothing more than up and down and up again. Twelve-thousand-foot passes, 13,00-foot passes and finally, at the end, Trail Crest and Mt. Whitney at 14,000-plus feet. Only after that summit are there ten easy miles which lead down and out, back to the showers, the cooked food and the bed I looked forward to on the 25th day.

But the end would mean more than just a return to "civilization." It would finalize an accomplishment, something that, as one man said, I "could sit on for a long time," a kind of personal success. When I began I had never before backpacked more than three days at a stretch. Likewise, I had never been as strong physically, or as comfortable with the equipment strapped on my back or as confident in the ability of one part of my mind to suppress the fear and panic that could crop up in its other parts.

However, neither strength nor equipment nor mind control were necessary on the 26th day, the day I should have topped Whitney and finished the hike. Instead there was disappointment all day. It rained hard and heavy, having started the day before in intermittent bursts, the first rain I'd seen the whole trip.

I sat in the Crabtree Ranger Station, several miles from the base of the mountain, along with the Crabtree Ranger, a couple I had hiked with for two days, and four or five others who had pressured the ranger into letting them escape the rain and dry off. It was the couple who convinced me not to hike in the rain, to wait till the next day when, perhaps, it would be beautiful again. It was easy to acquiesce. After 210 miles I wanted to climb to the top of the highest peak in the U.S. and take in the view, a pointless effort in the rain which hid the mountain from the view and the view from the mountain.