Mt. Whitney Report:

On Aug. 9th, 2003  I completed my fifth ascent of Mount Whitney.  All five trips were different.  The first, in 1975, was the standard way, climbing from Whitney Portal at 8300' and camping at Trail Camp at 12,000' for the night. The next morning we hiked up the to the summit at 14,457.76' and took in the view for awhile.  Then we hiked the 11 miles  back down and drove home that day.  The second time, Lona and our group stopped at Outpost Camp at 10,300' to spend the night, hiked up to Trail Camp the next morning and slept until 10:30 PM.  Then we hiked all night by full moon to be at the top to see the sunrise. When we had our fill of that, we went all the way down and drove home.   That was a wonderful experience.  The sunrise on top was glorious.   I know many are saying, "That is a long time to take from Trail Camp."  OK, we had a slow group.  The third time, on a Fourth of July, Lona and I started up from Outpost Camp at sunrise and hiked the rest of the way to the top with crampons and ice axes on a trail still covered with  snow, arriving the summit a couple of hours before sunset.  We eked our way down the whole moonless night on the crunchy snow, clear back down to Outpost camp where we arrived at sunrise the next day. That was less wonderful.  My fourth assent was up the Mountaineering trail pioneered by John Muir.  That involved some crampon and ice axe work up a steep snowfield and then some scrambling up a boulder field.  That was also wonderful except for having to hobble down almost all of the mountain on a painfully swollen ankle I had sprained near the top coming down.

On this latest trip, our group of six spent the afternoon at Whitney Portal packing for the long hike the next day, and got to bed early to try to get some sleep since we were getting up at 12:30 to be on the trail by 2 AM. Sleep was elusive, however, not only because I was more nervous than usual because I knew that the 22 miles round trip with over 6000' elevation to gain all in one day would be very tough -- even painful, but also because the rowdy bunch in the next camp was boozing and whooping it up until nearly midnight.  Even after they finally gave up and went to bed, the melliferous sound of a guy puking his guts out continued for another 15 minutes.   They had told us they were heading up the next day.  Wiser people celebrate after coming back down not before heading up.  I doubt that they made it.

When we awoke (or in my case, got up) at 12:30 AM,  I stumbled out and found that a bear had gotten into my tent mate's day pack and had eaten his food.  I wondered why he had not left it in the bear box.  Then we found that the bear box was open, and the bear had taken my day's rations as well.  In a rare feat of tracking by flashlight, I found about 50 yards away the remains where the bear had eaten my food.  It was obvious from the debris that it was indeed a bear.  After the six of us discussed what we knew of the incident, such as hearing voices in the night which sounded like it came from near our camp, and one of us seeing a couple of them wandering in the road outside our camp at the same general time, we decided the circumstantial evidence pointed to the rowdies running out of booze and some of them getting into our bear box to see if we had any.  Naturally they would not have locked it back up which would have made a noise when the latch engaged.  Fortunately my tent mate and I had a little more hiking food stashed in another bear box near the trail head and the others shared a portion of their food, so we did not go hungry.

The night hike was cool and little breezy, but quite pleasant.  I used a white LED headlight to hike at night.  It is light weight, and the batteries seem to last forever.  It is not intensely bright, which is good because it did not blind me to things outside the beam.  It gave plenty of light to see where I was going.  My headlight also has a high intensity incandescent bulb head if I really need it to be brighter for such things as doing watch repair after dark, or perhaps more urgently, trying to unclog the fuel jet of the camp stove so supper can be cooked.

First dawn's alpenglow on the eastern cliffsEventually, the darkness of night gave way to the dim pre-dawn twilight.  We continued hiking without our headlights and in a stroke of good fortune we reached Trail Camp at 12,000’ well above the tree line just as the sun broke over the horizon.  It was an incredible, almost startling sight -- as if someone suddenly switched on a reddish orange floodlight to illuminate the eastern cliffs of the mountain range.  Had we been any later, we would not have been in position to see it.
 

Trail camp was our last chance for water, so we took on all that we would need for the rest of the climb up and back.  (Being primarily a desert rat, I am fanatic about not running out of water, so I carried up way too much and carried much of it back to trail camp again.)  After a short rest and some snacks, we were off again for the long trudge up the switchbacks climbing nearly 1500’ feet up the cliff to Trail Crest, the pass between the eastern and western side of the mountain ridge.  Unfortunately, Trail Camp was as far as two in our group got as fatigue and mountain sickness took its toll requiring them to turn back.  I hope that they at least felt well enough to appreciate dawn’s alpenglow on the cliffs.
  The trudge up the switchbacks is always a grind, but the view of the eastern face of the mountain from  there is spectacular.  What a feeling of View of Whitney from switchbackselation at reaching Trail Crest, but this elation is misguided because there is another 1000’ of elevation to be gained in nearly two miles before reaching the summit of Mt. Whitney.   Above 14,000’, this effort is tough, and for a final insult, the trail just before the summit is some of the steepest.  It was at the top that another of our party, one of the youngest, had a splitting headache from mountain sickness and hardly took time to look over the edge before heading right back down.  Once you reach the top, you know that you have earned the view. A bone in my food (cuboid) had slipped out of joint on the way up.  Besides hurting like the dickens when stepping up onto a rock, it also made my footing unsteady.  A smarter person would have turned back, because going down is a lot harder on your feet than going up.  How was I going to get down?  Luckily while enjoying the top, I found that I could perform some self chiropractic and pop it back in.  It took about six tries, but it finally stayed, and I made it down fine.    Being able to see the great scenery going down that was missed going up in the dark made the return seem shorter.  It was a lot faster, too – about 5.5 hours down vs. 9.5 up.  At the bottom, I thought, "Hey! I feel great.  I can't believe it."  However, it didn't take long for rigor mortis to set in as soon as I got off my feet and relaxed.  Two days later, I began to get over being stiff and sore, but it took all week to get Whitney summit over the deep exhaustion.   Am I  glad I did it?  YOU BET!

Tundra cascade
































Don on summit