Mount Whitney 14,508′
Sierra Nevada
Archival Series (statistic approximate)- Climbed 6/16/2011
Total Time: 20 hours
Distance: 22 miles
Elevation Gain: 6600′
Crux: Class 1, PD
Trailhead: Whitney Portal, full services
Companion: Holly
As my trip reports seem to have a slight lull in the winter months, I decided to revisit some older trips and climbs from well before the creation of this site, when I was younger and completely inexperienced. Of course this Archival Series will be far from comprehensive, but it seemed worthwhile to write about some of the marquee summits from early in my peakbagging career, particularly ones that I had kept journal entries on and had a decent number of photographs (which in general seem to be the California 14ers). And what better peak to start than the one that started this grand peakbagging obsession for me- Mount Whitney. The highest mountain in California and all of the lower 48 states, I consider this to be my first real mountain, and in fact was the probably the first time I climbed anything over 8,000′. Holly and I first climbed Mount Whitney June 16th, 2011 with a massive snowpack, the trail buried in snow above 10,000′. We had no experience with crampons, renting them in Lone Pine the day before. Although we summited, the climb took 21 hours, Holly got extremely altitude sick, and we were quite lucky that we descended relatively unscathed despite our lack of experience. That being said, this report should not be used as permission to enter the high mountains unprepared, but more as an opportunity to reflect on how we could have been better prepared and how far we’ve come since our first big summit.
The moon was almost completely full as we started up from Whitney Portal. Although the canyon we were climbing faced east, the moon was still high enough in the sky that we barely needed headlamps along the open switchbacks, a series of lights bobbing along the trail above at 3:30 in the morning. The Whitney Trail is beautiful, but the series of switchbacks at the start are long and monotonous, and it was nice to hike through them in the dark. It was still dark when we hit the first patches of snow near the indistinct junction with Lone Pine Lake, and we followed the foot prints through the snow into Bighorn Park.
Although the meadow was mostly flooded with snow, a series of log bridges kept us above the muck and across to the next series of switchbacks. We continued along the trail until we reached Mirror Lake where the snow coverage went from patchy to 100%. We were still feeling quite good and thought the summit was not far above, although in reality we were looking at Pinnacle Ridge, not the summit of Whitney. We stopped to put on our crampons and tentatively started up the snow slope above Mirror Lake, looking to others to see if we were even doing it correctly.
The early morning snow was the perfect consistency, and we quickly climbed up the bench above the lake and into the broader canyon above Lone Pine Creek.
As we approached Trail Camp, we had our first view of the actual summit, with specks on the snow above not boulders like we initially thought, but climbers ascending the steep ice chute and buried switchbacks. We turned to each other saying. “that can’t be it right?” We were told that the last water source was at Trail Camp below the “99 switchbacks,” which were completely buried in snow. But when we reached Trail Camp, we found Lone Pine Creek frozen under ice. Continuing here was our first real mistake of the day, and although I don’t remember the exact amount of water we started up the final slope to Trail Crest with, it was probably only around a liter each. But in our youth and ignorance, we pressed up, starting up the much steeper slope above Trail Camp. Not only was this section steeper, but it had been exposed to the sun far longer, and we were post holing with nearly every step as we climbed higher. Couple this with our lack of acclimatization (we had only been slightly over 7,000′ the week before) our progress was extremely slow.
People were already descending as we continued up, and we saw glissading for the first time, looking like a rather convenient way to get down the mountain when the time came. It was about noon by the time we reached trail crest, both of us thoroughly soaked from post holing and wearing mostly cotton layers (another big mistake, although luckily it was a warm day).
Trail Crest was actually completely free of snow, and the summit looked within reach for the first time all day. But this was where the rationing of water and altitude really caught up with us. Although it was only about 3 miles with under 1,000′ of elevation gain to the summit, it would take us close to 4 hours to cover that distance, needing to break to catch our breath every hundred yards. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but Holly had fairly significant altitude sickness with a bad headache and nausea, yet another instance where we should have turned back. It was late afternoon when we actually summited, only half through the day, nearly out of water and with 11 snowy miles to go to get down.
We gave ourselves a short break for some food, and Holly actually began to feel a bit better. We were lucky enough to bum some water off some better prepared hikers, but as we began our descent, our speed did not greatly improve, with quite a few more short uphill segments than we remembered. In fact, getting back to the top of the 99 switchbacks took almost as long as getting to the top of Whitney. Hopeful to get down as quickly as possible, we decided to try this glissading thing out. I sat down in one of the channels in the snow, started sliding- and almost immediately lost control. The snowpack, now in the shade, had completely hardened to ice, making glissading outright deadly. I slid down about 15′ and we immediately abandoned that plan, putting our crampons back on and utilizing the innumerable steps kicked into the snow to walk down to Trail Camp, taking considerably longer but far safer.
Enough snow had melted throughout the day that we were able to find some running water to treat back at Trail Camp, the first time we were able to refill since Mirror Lake that morning. We continued down the canyon, switching on our headlamps for the remainder of the hike out. As the sun set, the glow of Lone Pine and a warm meal taunted us, but we were too exhausted to pick up the pace. We felt like we were in the clear back at Mirror Lake, but lost the trail on the east side of Scout Camp, winding up at Lone Pine Lake and needing to rely on a group of other lost and late hikers that had a GPS to guide us back to the main trail. It was 11:30 PM by the time we got back to the car, and when we reached Lone Pine, the only thing open was a gas station with some hot dogs and microwaveable food. Quite the hollow victory meal.
A few lessons learned the hard way on our first big mountain- always carry a map and know how to read it, don’t wear cotton in the high mountains, know your water sources and how they may change seasonally, acclimate before climbing big mountains and recognize the signs of altitude sickness and, most importantly, make sure you can finish before the restaurants close for the night.
