Beach people – The Very Young Boy and the Very Old Man
The Very Young Boy leaps atop The Very Old Man. Photos by Devin Barnes
by Steve O’Brien
The Very Young Boy does not like to be still.
He leaps in the air. He bounds, he bounces, he hops from one foot to the other. His hair, wild and frazzled, slinks and springs with each movement. First, he is in one corner of the yard. A rustling moment later he sprints across the grass, as though it were a giant meadow and he a wild cat. Jumping, prancing, pretending. He moves instinctively and for no other reason than he must. Both feet in the air now, he detaches from the ground, up, up, up…
The Very Old Man is very still.
He has sat this way since the Cenozoic Era, some 50 million years ago. Back then, he leapt and bounded, too, albeit more slowly than we perceive The Very Young Boy to. Up, up, up, the Very Old Man lurched and stretched and forged himself, until he reached 14,505 feet above sea level. And there he sits today, very still, perched atop the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, at the southernmost tip of the John Muir trail, king of all summits in the lower 48.
Noah Beltrao Barnes, 6, climbed to the top of Mt. Whitney’s wearing the state flag of his mother’s native Pernambuco, Brazil.
Mt. Whitney was named for Josiah Whitney, head of the California Geological Survey from 1860 to 1874. The Paiute Indians called the highest mountain this side of Alaska “Too-man-go-yah,” or, “The Very Old Man.” The first documented ascent to the towering peak above the city of Lone Pine was in August, 1873. 144 years to the month later, The Very Young Boy completed his first ascent.
At 6 years old, he is likely the third youngest person ever to have climbed it.
“I started taking him hiking because he could never be still. I don’t like to be still. It seems stronger with him,” his father says as his son leaps around the front yard in a blur of curls and sneakers.
Dad Devin Barnes, of Redondo Beach, also does not like to be still. A surfer, skateboarder, back-country snowboarded, and hiker, he is always on the move, always out in nature, season and ocean swell depending. These days he brings The Very Young Boy with him.
Noah Beltrao Barnes stands (when he can be still enough to be measured) approximately 4-foot-1 above sea level. The Tulita School student began his hiking career at the age of four, backpacking with his mom and dad. That first run was a six-mile trek, one in which young Noah did not tire or take breaks or need any help. “Altitude never affected him,” his father said. Since then, he and his family have scoured the wilderness of Southern California for more mountains to climb.
“We just got back from a remote hot springs hike and I thought Noah could do it. He carries his own gear. He never complains.”
“It’s a tough hike,” Noah said, matter-of-factly. “So, you must prepare.”
To prepare for Mt. Whitney the family completed five of the “SoCal Six Pack of Peaks,” a series of six increasingly more difficult hikes designed by Jeff Hester specifically for Southern California hikers training for challenges like the John Muir trail and Mt. Whitney.
While records of this sort are kept casually, the youngest hikers known to have tackled Mt. Whitney are Tyler Armstrong of Yorba Linda, who climbed it in 2012 at the age of 7, and Anthony Slosar of Rancho Santa Fe, who did it as a 6-year-old last year. As far as research can tell, Noah is the next youngest to have completed it.
The Forest Service only allows so many hikers per day to climb Whitney. A lottery must be entered, and Devin and Noah almost didn’t get picked. At 10 a.m. on August 25, however, Devin received one ticket. He called back to see if another would be available that afternoon. A couple ahead of him was a no-show and he was given their slot. The Service was hesitant to hand over the pass when they saw The Very Young Boy who would be taking it, but Devin assured them he was ready. They set out for the first leg of their journey that evening.
Father and son Noah and Devin Barnes at the summit of Mt. Whitney.
“I was anxious for him,” Devin said. But Noah didn’t seem concerned. They two spent hours skateboarding at a park near their home before setting out for Lone Pine Lake, where they set up camp. There was no one else around. Father and son took a swim in the fading light of day.
The next morning they continued on to trail camp and arrived in the evening. Then, Sunday, August 27, at 4:30 a.m., Noah, fueled by Trader Joe’s fruit bars and turkey jerky, his excited father in tow, set out from the trail camp for the summit of Mt. Whitney. The hike to the peak is approximately 11 miles with a gain of more than 6,000 feet in elevation. The hardest part of the climb is the monotonous 99 switchbacks that precede the final leg to the top. Noah cleared them just in time for sunrise, the first he had ever witnessed.
The Very Young Boy continued on, unassisted, until 8:55 a.m., when he reached the summit and leapt into the air.
Asked why he wanted to climb Mt. Whitney, Noah responded with a shrug of his shoulders, as though the answer should be obvious.
“I just like to be in nature.”