That last hiking trip to Vogelsang and Dana proved to be effective practice/training for a different excursion- just a whee little stroll up to the highest peak in US' lower 49- Mount Whitney!
The trail is quite popular so permits are required to be on it at all; our friends Sarah & Justin put in some potential date options during the lottery season, hoping to fulfill a long-standing item on Sarah's dad's bucket list. Since they received 6 permits, but only her father and 1 sister were able to make the trip, we were the lucky friends offered involvement in their group!
Patrick and I drove the approximate 6 hours to Sequoia National Park on Tuesday the 19th to meet the others at a Whitney Portal campsite near the trailhead (~8,000 ft). After dinner, a trail mix making party and a good night's sleep, we started the 6 mile ascent to Trail Camp (~12,000 ft). But first, we weighed our bags at a backpacker's scale for the fun of it! I had the lightest pack at 37 lbs, and Patrick had the heaviest, around 45. I offered to lighten others' loads (since the community gear/food was distributed between us anyway), but everyone was stubborn I guess!
A nice view of the valley behind and below us, as we get close to the Whitney zone.
(On the left)- Um, can I say like the coolest lunch spot ever?! There was a stream/lake thing below us too- all very serene. (On the right)- peaking at a waterfall between some trees, after we got moving again.
Still seems so far away (but closer than at lunch, if you take a look again). The summit is the right-most of that section in the center. It has a smoother look, and is angled at a tilt between 7:00 & 2:00 position.
The picture below is from our last day, but it shows where we stationed ourselves for 2 nights. (Patrick, in the gray, is standing where our tent was staked, and the others had 2 tents erected in the small enclosure around them.) We arrived at Trail Camp around dusk pretty tired and hungry. The men filtered water at the small lake in that green, lusher area behind us, and Sarah prepped our dinner of freeze dried lasagna (it was quite tasty actually!), with fried brownie-mix globs for dessert. At the end of the night, Patrick made a call for all food, trash, toiletries to get stashed in the bear canisters. It was looking tight already, but then Sarah's dad brought us a pile of like 20 cliff/power bars and 4 bags of trail mix! We couldn't be mad at him ("I thought someone might want to share," he said, even though everyone packed snacks enough for themselves), but it did require some good-ole-fashion stuffing to get it all in! And it became the running joke of the trip. :)
Camp was near the part of the trail with the 99 switchbacks (or something like that), so that started off the morning's route, to complete the remaining 5ish miles to the top. Our packs were light (we took the day's supplies, and left the rest at camp), and the grade of the trail was much gentler than the prior day's, so Patrick and I were rip-roaring and ready to get up the mountain! But part of the reason our permits were for 3-days was because our friends wanted to take a comfortable pace and soak in the sights and finer things, which we could also appreciate:
Being on a giant mound of granite, we sometimes had tunnel vision of tan and gray. But occasionally your eye would catch lovely glimmers of sun reflecting off smooth feldspar cleavage planes, or be captivated by clean outcrops of quartz.
And, all that tan/gray really made colors like this POP when you came across them.
The animals were too accustomed to people (chipmunks and marmots all circled our camp while we were eating breakfast, and one managed to make off with a bag of Patrick's trail mix while our backs were turned!). It was kinda disgruntling sometimes, but also a great chance to see this cute little pika up close!
A look back at what we'd accomplished so far, before rounding a corner to tackle a new section of mountain. That green/black smear on the left is the little lake our tents were camped next to. The blue lake on the right was so vivid and shimmered enticingly!
"Trail Crest"- we got past a final hilltop that took us through a pass
to the backside of Whitney. The sights were breathtaking!
We paused for a snack at this ledge around midday, but it would have been easy to stay there longer!
I
Nearly to the top! We should have eaten lunch instead of just a snack. The elevation wasn't a problem for me on the way up, but the hunger and lack of energy was starting to by that time (2:30ish). But we were holding out for the top!
Success! That day and the one prior, we had passed back-and-forth between the same few hikers at various points. I joked with one of them: "Aw, we're all up here together!" the way it timed out. :) The sign totes one number, but some of these other summit rocks are slightly higher, or at least all the souvenirs suggest so with a reading of 14,508 feet.
Regardless of the exact number of feet, I might have to eat my hat on that statement earlier about coolest lunch spot ever....
Since carrying a bunch of glass champagne bottles wouldn't be conducive to keeping our backpacks lightweight, we came up with a more compact solution for something special to 'cheers' at the top. We packed a little flask of good scotch we purchased in London earlier this year, and since we only have 2 mini stainless steel shot glasses, we served the rest of the group with plastic cough syrup cups!
We signed our names in a log, and there was even reception to send some
texts, or as Patrick suggested, make a phone call to my coworker who had
climbed Whitney some years back, and was really excited for my trip
there. I'm so glad I did; I think she got a real kick out of it!
For some reason, the descent didn't go as well. Patrick's contact got a major tear in it immediately after we began again, so he had to hike the whole way back to camp with proper vision in only one eye. Despite feeling totally fine on the way up, my body felt 'off' in some way, and I had this urge to cry the majority of the return trip due to the physical discomfort. It wasn't anything severe though; I was still able to recognize the beauty around me as the light dimmed and softened the landscape:
As we approached camp we witnessed the crash and cloud of a close-by rockslide; as we resettled in camp, Patrick and Justin were nauseous (they think they shocked their stomachs, due to drinking too much too fast after not taking in enough during the day); Sarah was super chilled and had to keep her sleeping bag around her as she cooked dinner; and I had to clean my sleeping bag because an animal had peed on it! (At least it was not much, hadn't soaked in, and I packed baby wipes.)
But we were all better off than the 15-year-old with altitude sickness we encountered on the hike back. He and his mom, aiming to hike the whole trail in one day, hadn't refilled their water before passing the last reliable source long before. We pooled together some water and Gatorade for them, but it wasn't just a hydration issue. The boy didn't know where he was, and was repeatedly throwing up or dry heaving. Justin carried the boy's bag and he & Sarah accompanied the two to ensure sure they'd make it back. Patrick and I got a little ahead to tend to camp and start dinner right away, in case we had a potential emergency situation on our hands and needed to care for them that night. But luckily the boy had a major turnaround as he got to lower ground and kept more fluid down, so they made it to Trail Camp not too long after we did, and were feeling well enough to finish the journey to the trailhead that night.
After dinner, we all were feeling much more ourselves again, and none of the negative was intense enough or lasted long enough to negate the first part of the day. In fact, we were positively grateful the next morning, simply for the perfect weather we had. Our final day was extremely blustery (Patrick and Sarah had to prevent a tent absent of it's owner from blowing off), and would have made for a much more resistant journey and chilly summit.
The hike to the trailhead was tough on our feet, but our companions are much quicker on the downhill, so we took time to detour to a lake where we rested our peds on this log and got a group shot on the beach. Even though it was a there-and-back route, we still had plenty of nature's eye candy to re-engage us along the way.
Windburned and stiff, but we finished the trail in good spirits and happy to toss our wag bags! I know it's weird to have a pic of this, but I relished the idea of grossing out my sisters a bit (we had to pack out all our waste... but imagine the state of the mountain otherwise, with tons of visitors unable to bury through bedrock- it's for a logical reason!).
A bunch of hikers we talked to on the journey kept saying they were looking forward to having a burger at the end; by the time we ended too, that's all we could think about. Each of us feasted on a cow patty, fries and a beer from the grill at Whitney Portal Store before heading home. Patrick and I also paused on the return drive to have dinner at 'The Mobil' (super cool gas station, home of the Whoa Nellie Deli), and to see Half Dome at dusk from Olmsted Point:
Soooo, I don't want to brag or anything, but I'm kinda realizing looking at all this that I've got a pretty neat life. :) I definitely appreciate having the capability, opportunity, and accessibility to experience this. We are blessed!
