Whitney got sauce

June 1st Day 67 We awoke at 3am to hike Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the contiguous US. It was only 6 miles to the summit and we were only carrying daypacks so I figured it would be easy. Ha! I could not have been more wrong. The first thing we had to deal with was the altitude. We still hadn’t acclimatized so it was like hiking drunk while having an asthma attack. Plus, there had been a fair amount of recent snowfall, on top of older snow. Then add that to the fact we left without eating breakfast…. pure exhastion. And for the icing on the cake thunder storms were expected at 11am so we couldn’t dawdle.

Thankfully the views were amazing. The higher and higher we climbed the more enormous snowy mountains appeared beneath us. Massive rock walls to steep to hold snow, peak after peak glowing pink in the sunset and far far below green specks which we knew were mighty pine trees. The last 1.9 miles after we’d reached Whitney Portal were the most difficult and required our ice axes as we crossed steep icy snow patches. The path was cut into the steep ridge and occasionally we’d have a break in the rock and take a terrified glance east at the clouds and valley far below.

Towards the end I felt like I was going to pass out and was having to take a break every few steps. I wasn’t sure my legs were capable of taking me back down the mountain, but thankfully gravity did most of the work. Soon after we arrived back down the mountain thunder boomed around us as hail peltered our waterproof jackets. Not bad timing, eh?

Our Summer in the Sierras

Adam & Andy

Day 64 The High Sierras were a different universe to the desert we’d been hiking in. Water was everything, though I was surprised at how little snow there was at first. We saw evidence of snow only recently melted, however, in the bright red waxy snow plants that protruded from the saturated soil. The high altitude made us feel breathless and light headed, like 2 teenagers in love or kids at fat camp. Today we bumped into Andy, who’d just did Olancha Peak, and hiked & chatted with him for a while. He’d been hiking with Adam and they were still planning on doing 10 more miles so we doubted we’d see them again but the next morning Day 65 we saw Adam & Andy, who would be our hiking companions over the next 2 weeks. We fell into a great rhythm… sometimes we’d hike together, sometimes we’d hike on our own but we’d camp together and in the days ahead tackle the difficult snow-covered passes as a team. That night we camped at Chicken Spring Lake and got some closer glimpses of the mighty snowy mountains ahead. Day 66 we left the PCT to hike to just before Timberline Lake so we could climb Mt Whitney the next morning.