Early Morning Hiking

This is why it pays to get up at 4am and stat hiking with your headlamp! Beautiful early morning scenery like this! Seriously how many people in the world get to see this kinda of stuff in the middle of the sierras!

The rocks literally changed from pink to gold in minutes!

More on Mt Whitney

I still can't believe were actually going! So here's our plan. Leave early tomorrow morning and eat lunch/late breakfast in Lone Pine. Then Drive up to the portal and finish getting our gear situated. We plan to be on the trail NLT noon so we can reach Trail Camp before it gets dark to set up camp and cook dinner. We bought a stove thing that we will be cooking with and have dehydrated lasagna and sweet and sour chicken as meals. We are also bringing bread, olive oil and parm. cheese. Desert will be cookies. We'll be camping at 12,000 feet so I think its going to be rather cold. Glad I bought that mummy bag! We plan to get up early (about 4am) to reach the summit in the morning. Then we make the 11 mile trek back down to the bottom, go eat a nice dinner, and drive home! Its definitely intense but will be so worth it. I asked my mom to call first thing Tuesday morning to make sure we made it home okay. So 22 miles in 2 days and we'll reach an altitude of just over 14,500! I am bringing my xt and 2 lenses, so there should be lots of photos.

We spent last night going to the stores to get all our last minute stuff we needed. It really does take a lot to get ready for a backpacking trip. Now we'll be ready for Grand Canyon though.

Mt Whitney, Here We Come

OMG…so things are really going my way lately!!! We were planning on doing a practice backpacking hike this wekeend to prepare for the Grand Canyon hike. So, I just had Dave call the Mt Whitney permit office to see if anyone cancelled for this weekend! You have to have a permit to hike Mt Whitney. It's a very controlled area. Anyway, they just had 6 permits come available….so we are hiking Mt Whitney (the tallest peak in the continental US) this weekend!!!!! Glad we did Half Dome ealier in the year. I can't believe were going! I'm so freakin excited!!!! about 6000 feet elevation gain and 21 miles in 2 days.