Mt Whitney

A couple months ago a buddy who I've worked with at Wells Fargo with for several years emailed me out of the blue and said "hey, I have a permit to hike Mt Whitney, want to join?" Well hell yeah! The highest peak in the continental US, could you come up with a better summer activity?


On a Thursday in July, 4 of us headed to Kirkwood for a day, first to acclimate to altitude at 7800 feet. The next morning we drove south to Lone Pine, CA - back down to 3000 feet and 100+ degree temps - to spend the night and get ready for the big hike.


Because summer thunderstorms can be treacherous in the Sierra Nevada’s we got a very early start. We left the hotel at 2am, and on the trail at 2:45! The hike starts at 8300 feet, and it was pitch black dark, except for our headlamps. There were definitely people who started earlier because the only thing we could make out in the distance were headlamps on the trail above us.


Around 4:30 I could make out my first traces of the mountains above, and shortly after 5am I was the first one in our group to turn my headlamp off. At 5:50 we were watching the sunrise from 11,000 feet. Just after 6am, we arrived at the 12,000 foot trailside camp, where many hikers were just waking up to start a shorter summit hike.


I was feeling pretty good up to 12,000 feet. I could certainly tell the air was thinner, but wasn’t huffing & puffing and the legs still felt pretty good. The next leg was where it started to get harder. We climbed up a long section of trail to 13,700 feet which included 96 switchbacks. I was happy to have the trail flatten out for a bit as we caught our first views toward the west of Whitney into Sequoia national park.


Next was a brief downhill, then the last push up to the 14,494 foot summit. The trail was beautiful, but we just seemed to slow down as we were stepping on and over lots of granite rocks and as the air was so thin. From 14,000 feet to the summit it didn’t take more than a few steps to get my heart beating out of my chest.
At 9:50, we were standing at the summit! I was pretty exhausted at this point, and it took a few minutes of recovery to fully enjoy it. Mt. Whitney itself just looks like a big pile of broken granite rocks. It’s actually much less impressive looking than some of the jagged peaks nearby.. but, Whitney is the tallest!


The way down was much easier on the lungs, but was brutal on the legs. In the last couple hours, my feet were just killing me every time I took a step. It was a great sense of accomplishment to get back to the car around 3:30, know we’d hiked 22 miles & 6000+ feet up & down in a single day!


Back at the hotel in Lone Pine it was 106 degrees! It felt like an oven just standing in the parking lot, but boy that pool felt good. A couple hours later we rewarded ourselves with burgers, ice cream, a couple beers, then bedtime.