A Crazy Journey to Hike White Mountain

We hiked up the second tallest mountain in California Sierras, called White Mountain. It stands at 14,246 feet tall. The unpaved road leading to the start of the trail is very rough and it takes over 2 hours to cover. In order to make it easier, we rented a big Dodge RAM 1500 4x4 and were driving along the road with a few bumps along the way when we got a flat tire and simultaneously ran out of gas fully!
We waited, while asking cars that drove by if they had an extra gas canister and then a man stopped and decided to help us fix our tire. He had car problems of his own, but got help at the head of the trail and wanted to pay it forward. First, he asked us to find the tool kit in our car, however we couldn’t find it, then he got out of his car looked for it and 30 seconds later found the kit. He then got down on all fours and helped us install the spare tire. He was speedy; in fact, no one had ever seen anyone replace a tire so fast, let alone in the middle of a dirt path with limited resources.
Next, we had to tackle the gas problem. The next car that stopped gave us a long flex pipe to siphon off gas from our friend's 4x4, which we were unsuccessful doing. The car was less than empty as the gauge showed but was miraculously able to take us an extra six miles to the trail head. There were many people at the campsite, but no one had gas, though someone gave us an empty gas canister, another gave a siphon pump.
We decided to proceed to the hike and temporarily forgot the gas problem, truly in More family style.
Starting the hike at 2:15AM, with the moon shining bright and pleasant weather, we were the only people hiking, but soon, my dad and Amber broke away. We only saw them later at the summit 7 miles away, where we reached an hour after they did!!
My mom and I saw many mountains, and since it was dark, we thought each of them was the summit. When hiking back in the light, we saw that all those “mountains” were actually big piles of rocks. During the decent, we passed the University of California research center at 12,500 feet. We made friends with and official who agreed to give us the gas if we provided a gas canister. We returned with the canister and received 5 gallons of fuel! Our new friend refused to take money from us!
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This hike taught us the importance of filling up our gas tank and also showed us that we can get by with the kindness of strangers.