by Jared Stone
Flank steak primarily comprises the abdominal muscles of the cow, off the belly, in front of the back legs. The problem is, I have a single cow. And that cow has only so much flank steak, which is good for lots and lots of preparations. Due to its scarcity, I’m not entirely sure I want to sacrifice any of it to make jerky.
Most butchers use top round for jerky. It’s similarly low-fat, can be cut to the right size, and, if I slice with the grain, can be cut molecule-thin. I decide that this is the cut for me. Top round comes off the back leg of the animal, and since there are two back legs, I have scads and scads of top round.
The low-fat content of this cut is also key. Fat can go rancid at room temperature simply from exposure to oxygen, which would defeat the main point of making jerky: preservation. The lack of fat also makes cuts from the round primal prone to drying out easily, which is good for me, as drying out some meat is exactly what I’m trying to do.
First things first. I find a top round steak in the two-pound range. As jerky, it’ll weigh considerably less, but I figure it should be enough to get me up and down the hill. I pull it from the freezer but don’t thaw it all the way. If it’s still a little frozen, it will stay firm and slice more easily.
I cut the top round along the grain, slicing it as thin as humanly possible. If a stiff breeze came through, these slices would flutter away. I could read an eye chart through these things.
That done, I prep my marinade. It may be possible to botch a marinade from a flavor standpoint, but from a chemical standpoint they’re pretty straightforward. I need to build a salty, acidic liquid that tastes good. Soy sauce, Worcestershire, and red pepper feature prominently. I like the heat.
I stash all the meat in a Ziploc bag and stow it in the fridge. It needs to relax overnight so that the marinade has time to penetrate the meat. It won’t penetrate far—despite what you’ve read, say, everywhere, marinade does not reach deep into the meat. It penetrates the surface of the meat a few millimeters, but no farther. Lucky then that my meat is only the thickness of a sheet of graphene.
So—cool. I have to let the beef marinate overnight, and the rest of my day is unscheduled. Summer has the little man, and they’ve set out on the town to run some errands. I’m all alone, with time on my hands.
Yep. Nothing on the list.
Nothing at all.
I have a hard time doing nothing. I’m done, now, with the task set before me, and any sane being would rest. But I’m pretty thoroughly conditioned to seek out the next bit of stimulus—the next box to check, the next bullet for boredom, the next activity to slot into my schedule to free me from the impending panic of not being productive.
I fire up the laptop. I’m the nerdiest guy in most rooms, and I’ve been a gamer since the deep dark wayback of the proto-Internet. So I take this opportunity to rid a fictional sleepy little town of a horde of the slavering undead. This is in no way relaxing, though it does provide the task-oriented part of my cerebral cortex with the illusion of productivity. My sense of accomplishment is real enough, though. However unearned it may be.
The next morning, back in the real world, it’s time to get weird. I said this jerky was dummy-proof, and I meant it. The fastest and most efficient way that I could screw this up would be to burn it. I’ve had burned jerky—it’s like chewing a charcoal briquette. Since the jerky is so thin, it’ll burn if you so much as give it a come-hither look. Unless you don’t use heat.
The approach I’m using comes from culinary guru and Weird Science party-scene extra Alton Brown. It involves drying the meat without any heat. Furnace filters. Strapped to a box fan. Set on high. And left alone.
Yeah, let’s get weird.
After a quick trip to the hardware store, I’m getting ready to lay tiny slices of beef into the grooves on twenty-by-twenty furnace filters and trying not to wonder if the filters are fiberglass. Let’s say they aren’t. For safety, these filters should really be made of paper. Their packaging is unclear on the matter.
I’m sure they’re paper. They must be paper. Why wouldn’t they be paper?
But they really look like fiberglass. I’d prefer not to eat fiberglass.
Finally, caution gets the best of me, and I sandwich paper towels in between the furnace filters so that the beef isn’t directly touching the material-that-may-or-may-not-be-fiberglass. I turn the fan on high and walk away.
Eight hours later, I check the protojerky. Still moist.
Ten hours. Still moist.
Twelve. Moist. Also, did I mention that for some reason I did this inside? I did. That was perhaps a mistake. My entire home smells like a smokehouse. I move the box fan outside and plug it back in, wafting meat fumes across the lawn.
Thirteen hours in, there are cats in the yard. The fan comes back inside.
Finally, fifteen hours later, the beef is dry. The furnace filters are beyond ruined, stained brown with marinade and meat juices. But the jerky is done.
I examine a piece of jerky. It’s mostly dry and pencil-thin. It didn’t maintain a rectangular shape—each piece contracted into a cylinder. They look like little beef ballpoint pens.
I taste a piece. It’s lovely. Chewy and spicy, with just a subtle sweetness in the finish. I try another. I could definitely see myself eating this for a long period of time—on a climb up a very tall mountain.
I’ll soon get my chance.
* * *
I’ve never climbed a mountain before.
I love the outdoors, and I clamber around in the mountains near my house whenever I have the opportunity, which isn’t as often as I’d like. And I love to camp—in the same vague, but-I-never-do-it way that I love attending the symphony or painting with watercolors. Summer, on the other hand, makes no pretense about the woods—she’d rather wander through a downtown than the backcountry and sleep on high thread-count sheets than under the stars.
When the opportunity to climb Mount Whitney presented itself, however, I couldn’t say no. It came in an e-mail from my friend Zac. He and his wife, Katie, have been my close friends since high school, and as we’ve moved around the country in the intervening years, we’ve weirdly always managed to stay within a two-hour drive of each other. Our families plan vacations together. And somehow, Zac manages to get out into the wilderness a little more than I do. For both of us, this is a tremendous adventure. For me, this is a rare treat.
I’m going in a party of five—an assembly of friends and friends of friends, all hale and hearty and ready for the challenge. I’m by far the weakest link. Zac is the nucleus of the group and the only one who knows everyone. He’s a navy physician and the kind of guy who files down the plastic nubs of the playing pieces of board games. He measures the weight of his pack down to the milligram, and he’s one of my oldest friends. His buddy Uriah, in addition to having the best name on the planet, is a friend of Zac’s from way back. Uriah’s a gnome. Five feet six on his tippy toes, with the forearms of someone who both free climbs cliff faces near his Colorado home and also happens to be a recreational blacksmith. Rich is another navy doctor—a genial bear of a man—and an excellent general outdoorsman. He’s been up the mountain a half a dozen times, and he knows it well. He’s the closest thing we have to a guide. His wife, Natalie, is the only woman on the trip. She’s a yoga instructor and prone to breaking into spontaneous handstands. Then there’s me. My expertise is mainly limited to bad jokes and trivia questions.
Of the five of us, two are practicing military physicians with experience in emergency medicine; one is a skilled technical climber, acclimatized to high altitude; one is a fitness professional in peak physical condition; and one has an unproduced screenplay about fairies.
Mount Whitney is one of the most accessible high peaks in the United States. The path to the summit ascends very gradually. It’s a wide, well-tended twenty-two-mile trail that meanders along a route especially chosen to be accessible to hikers of all fitness levels, with permanent handholds installed for any potentially tricky bits.
/> We aren’t going that way.
We’re headed up something called the Mountaineer’s Route, and it isn’t actually a marked trail, though it is a well-known path to the mountain’s summit. We will start out on the main Mount Whitney Trail, then veer off the trail at the north fork of a mountain stream called Lone Pine Creek. We’ll follow this creek straight uphill about eight miles, rather than pussyfooting around the perimeter of the range. This route is shorter and harder and has a lot more exposure (i.e., chances to fall a very long way). It’s the route that John Muir took to what was then the roof of the country, and it’s a classic of American mountaineering.
Zac, Uriah, and I carpool from my place up to Whitney Portal. It’s a remarkable drive. North of Los Angeles, the suburbs and lush green lawns fall away as the road drops out of the San Gabriel Mountains and into the Mojave Desert. Water is scarce, and Joshua trees claw the impossibly blue sky like dessicated hands. As we drive north, the High Sierras rise out of nowhere, ten miles or so to our left. Among them, the highest point in the contiguous United States. To our right, just over the horizon, Death Valley, and the lowest point. It’s a climate of extremes.
Zac points the car into the mountains, and we ascend. Up and up, into a bowl situated high in the range, surrounded on all sides by stark granite cliffs and hundred-foot pines. This is Whitney Portal. The air is thick with the scent of pine trees and a feeling that somehow the world is bigger here than it is in cities at sea level.
We start unloading our gear. After my first enthusiastic trip from car to campsite, the altitude hits me. Just a touch dizzy. Just a touch out of breath. The High Sierras are no joke. My second trip is a little slower. More purposeful. Soon, the five of us are sitting on a crude wooden bench with an entire REI scattered around us.
I start to cook as night falls. Because of my recent bovine acquisition, I’m in charge of dinner at base camp. Steaks, as one might surmise. New York strips, to minimize variables—I can’t afford to mess this up. I’m cooking over a campfire, at elevation, with a dull knife and a handful of wishes. I need something I know.
It probably isn’t the best steak I’ve ever cooked, but it might be one of the best I’ve ever eaten. Moderately seared and red-rare on the inside, but eaten in a tall pine forest as a mountain stream gurgles nearby. Eaten in the dark. With a spork.
We talk about prep and the trek to come. There’s anticipation in the air. Something about the moment compels us to speak in low tones. There are jokes sprinkled among the logistics. And optimism. And just beneath the surface, a little trepidation.
Before dinner, we learned that the Whitney summit was snowed in.
We aren’t geared for snow.
* * *
The next morning, we set off. The trail winds along the side of the mountain, steadily uphill. I’m a little winded from the altitude, but nothing too bad. We all joke and chatter, excited to be under way. Soon enough, a stream of water gurgles and splashes out from the thick brush to our right. Lone Pine Creek. “Up,” Rich commands, pointing.
This is where the trail ends for us. But the route continues. We leave the nicely maintained trail, affectionately called the Mule Trail, and head directly up Lone Pine Creek. Thirty seconds later, a large sign warns us, in all caps: THIS IS NOT THE MOUNT WHITNEY TRAIL. Then, lower down: THE MOUNTAINEERS ROUTE IS NOT EASY. It goes on to clarify: “Visitors without proper skills, knowledge, equipment and experience have died here.”
“There are a lot fewer people on the Mountaineer’s Route,” I note.
“Just ten a day,” Rich says. “And we’re five of them.”
We continue upward at a much steeper grade than the trail we just left—probably over triple the incline. The Mountaineer’s Route climbs the same elevation as the main trail, but in about a third of the distance.
Forty-six pounds—the weight of my pack—was light at the bottom. It’s not so light now. Did I really need to bring that extra pair of shoes? There’s no signal on my phone. Why did I bring it? How many cameras are too many?
Continuing up, we cross back and forth across Lone Pine Creek a half-dozen or so times, stepping across slick, wet granite and dodging spray from waterfalls. It’s fun, but tiring. We break every minute or so, just for a few seconds, to give our lungs a chance to wring out every last molecule of oxygen from this so-called air.
At about 9,600 feet elevation, we bump up against a tall granite wall. Our path is not immediately obvious. We sit to rest, drinking water like camels and scarfing down enormous handfuls of sugary homemade granola. I have more than a little sugar in my pack, intended to help me power through any exhaustion I might encounter. The glucose is a welcome and immediate lift to my mood.
I look around. “Where do we go from here?” There is only the path that we came up, ending at a sheer granite wall.
Rich, leaning against the wall, points a single finger skyward. “These are the ledges, man.”
I look up. Zac had mentioned something about the Ebersbacher Ledges in passing. According to some, they’re the most difficult section of the route. Though not the most technically challenging, they offer some of the most daunting exposure of the journey. In other words, it’s an easy climb, so you probably won’t fall. But if you do fall, you’ll probably fall several hundred feet.
“Can I bum some jerky?” Rich asks.
“Of course.” I offer my stash. He takes a piece, and I shake the bag, weighing it roughly in my hand. I may have brought too much. In my zeal to prepare for every possible contingency, I may have burdened myself further. Still, I’m going to be hauling this entire bag to the top, either on me or in me. Better in me. I pop another stick in my mouth.
As I munch my jerky, I look up at the cliff. There isn’t a trail to be seen. From my perspective, it’s just a wall.
I offer jerky to Uriah, who’s also looking upward. He nods once to himself, definitively. “This’ll be fun.”
Rich leads us uphill, parallel with the cliff, beneath a canopy of gigantic woody bushes. We aren’t really on a path so much as a thin divide where the enormous plants looming over us can’t grow any closer to the granite cliff. I feel like a child again, hiding under the bushes that grew along the wall of my elementary school.
Another forty feet or so, and we turn around. There are boulders leading up and onto the granite wall. And upward from there in a series of sloping ledges.
“Ready?” Rich asks. But Uriah’s already up. That guy’s like some kind of goat.
We take our first tentative steps across the ledges. To my left, the ledges step up in increments five feet tall, one behind another. They’re like Little League bleachers for giant children.
The path in front of me is about three feet wide, narrowing to two as I continue. The ledge slopes gently, but noticeably, to the right. I trail my hand against the cliff wall to my left. Its solidity is comforting.
To my right is nothing but open space.
“Is this safe?” Natalie asks. I look back, and she has stopped, eyes fixed on the sheer drop to our right.
“Sure.” Rich nods. “Just don’t fall.”
I take a deep breath and turn back to my task. Ahead, Uriah’s strolling happily along, completely nonchalant. As if at any moment an entrepreneurial Sherpa might appear and sell him ice cream. He might even be whistling.
I begin to walk.
Just don’t fall. Why would I fall? I haven’t fallen yet. There’s no reason I should fall now. I have solid new boots. I even hiked in them beforehand to break them in. Mostly. I’m sure I won’t roll my ankle in them, like I did a couple weeks ago. On the sidewalk. The flat sidewalk. I shouldn’t have fallen then, either. And I have terrible ankles. Ever since I broke them in high school and—
Shut up. Just walk.
I press on, acutely aware of every ounce of my pack and the newness of my boots. I’m slightly top-heavy and I wobble with every step, the wobble amplified by my awareness of the precipice to my right. Once, I catch my right boot on my left cal
f and stagger for half a second before my foot finds the ground.
“You alright, man?” Uriah asks, shooting me side-eye.
“Oh, sure,” I answer, masking my clumsiness with humor. “You know, I’m thinking maybe I should get into parkour. Climb some walls. Jump some gaps. It’ll be great.”
“Yes!” Zac concurs. “Let me know when. I’ll go, too. We can get matching compound fractures together.”
I laugh.
“Up here, I think,” I hear Uriah say. I look, and he’s five feet or so above me, one level up, next to a small cairn. I grab the rock above me and pull myself up onto the ledge.
We continue upward. Another cairn. Another ledge. A gnarled tree root to grab. A sketchy crack to inch along. Uriah gives me a hand up. I do the same for Zac, who does the same for Rich, then Natalie. Then, suddenly, it’s over. A trail winds up and away now, leaving the ledges behind.
We pause. That wasn’t so bad. I look down. The ledges extend maybe twenty feet in front of me before ending at a sheer drop. To our left, the valley descends hundreds more feet to the portal, then thousands to the valley below.
Uriah shoves his hands in his pockets. “Cool.”
“That’s amazing,” Zac agrees. “How much farther to Lower Boy Scout?”
Rich looks up the hill. “Fifteen minutes or so.”
* * *
An hour later, we crest the lip of a cliff and come to the edge of Lower Boy Scout Lake. A broad expanse of water spreads out before us, placid and clear, to a broad granite cliff a half mile distant.
We sit for lunch. A fat handful of granola and some sticks of jerky. “Dude, how much did you bring?” Rich asks.