Mt. Whitney – September 7-8, 2008
Well, this is the big one, isn’t it? I’d had Mt. Whitney on my list for a long time, and I finally did it. This trail is interesting. If you take the main route, it is trail (and good trail) all the way. You can go in late summer and run into no ice or snow (though we did get some ice pellets!) It is 11 miles one way from Whitney Portal, and gains some 6100′ on the way to the summit at 14,505′, the tallest summit in the continental United States. It seems just like another hard, but not ridiculous trail.
But up at those kinds of elevations, the game changes. I felt pretty physically crappy at the top. I possibly pushed it a little further than I should have, but heck, I didn’t puke. But I saw a super fit guy in his 20s turn around at 9,000′. I talked to an older man in his 60s near the summit who said he had summited many many times, and could never understand how fit people could not make the trip…until he got violently ill on his 7th time up the mountain.
Anyway. I did this trail, camping the night before at Whitney Portal at 8k’ or so, spending one night along the way at Trail Camp at 12,000′ feet, then summiting and descending the following day. It was physically taxing to me, and I was definitely exhibiting signs of elevation sickness…but I made it. It is a beautiful trip, exempliyfing many of the beautiful things in the Sierras, and I spent a lot of it being miserable. Next time, the mountaineer’s route!
view west from the summit
