We are lucky enough that this mountain only stands 2 hours away from our house. It can be a challenge to score permits…especially for the overnight journey. They only give out 60 per day and its done by a lottery for the summer months. But we managed to snag two last minute permits for this weekend. We had planned to backpack that weekend, just not to Whitney. We drove up to Lone Pine early Friday morning to pick up the permits! Since we were there so early we had a good lunch in Lone Pine and even drove up to the Whitney Portal for a few minutes. I snagged this photo on the way back down.
Then we headed to Onion Valley to relax for the evening and camp at 9000 feet to get acclimated. It was a nice evening. Dave read his book while I took some photos.
Then we played some Phase 10, drank some wine, cooked dinner and smores over the campfire and went to bed.
The next morning we woke up around 7 am and packed up. We were on the trail head for Mt Whitney at about 10am. Our goal for the day was to reach Trail Camp at 12000 feet. The trail head starts at about 8200 feet. So we had to climb 3800 feet in 6 miles! We were backpacking...so we carried everything we needed for two days - actually 3 days cause we debated on staying 2 nights.
The going up was hard, but we were doing great. Cruising along at a nice backpacking pace. We did take some breaks to enjoy the scenery which included a half hour at mirror lake. But we managed to reach our destination at about 4pm.
Trail camp was a nice sight...we were so ready to put those packs down!We set up camp and it was already getting pretty chilly. The wind was picking up and we knew we were in for an interesting night.
Our dinner that night was Chili Mac.
Once it got to colder outside we wandered into the tent to play Phase 10. Our tent rocks…even though it was cold and windy it was rather comfy in our tent…of course with layers of clothes on. We turned in around 9pm. I think I felt anxious all night about the summit plus there was the noise of all the wind so it was hard to sleep. I finally felt like I got some good sleep in the wee hours of the morning. I awoke around 6 am and opened the tent to see this. I had already missed the sunrise...bummer!
The mountains in the morning are just so beautiful at that altitude!
We were back on the trail at 7am…this time with much lighter day packs. We had to cover almost 2500 feet in elevation in 5 miles to get to the top. We reached trail crest (13,700 feet) around 9:30am. This is where I turned around last year. But this year I had encouragement to keep me going! The backside of this trail really freaked me out…maybe I'm just a bit of a wuss when it comes to this kind of stuff. Butthe steepness down to the valley below and the narrow trail combined put me on edge! But there was some amazing scenery.
It was crazy cause to get to the top we had to wander through a snow field…in July! This freaked me out a bit too…cause I was worried about slipping.
We summited Mt Whitney at about 11:15am!!
After getting to the top, it was a long journey back down.
We reached our campground at 3pm. Enough time to pack up and head out. We had a 2 night permit and debated staying but we were ready for a shower and a bed. We were back on the trail just before 4pm and down at the trail head at 7:30pm. The last 2 miles were very hard cause my feet hurt tremendously. These 2 miles are normally difficult simply because you can see the portal but you feel like your not getting anywhere! Dave and I gave each other high fives as we reached the parking lot. We were on cloud nine looking back up to see where we had come from. To know that we both accomplished this together was amazing feeling! Seriously what an accomplishment for both of us. How amazing is it that we hiked to the top of Mt Whitney? I am glad now that I turned around last year, cause reaching this goal with Dave was a very special memory.
You know I never did any big hikes before we moved to Cali…now I'm addicted. This was actually my 3rd time on the Whitney trail. The first time I didn't summit cause of a snow storm, the second time you can read about here. I can't get enough of hiking the mountains. I think I discovered something about myself and found something that was missing in my life and I didn't even really know it was missing.
1 comment:
how awesome! what an amazing thing to have accomplished! proud of both of you!
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