Back from Mt Whitney.
Aunt Mary, JXN and I drove up on Wednesday and met with Dad. Headed out to the desert and did some shooting. The wild aluminum can population of the high desert took a beating from the combined shooting effort of Dad, JXN, Aunt Mary and Me. The heat got to Dad so he was an observer most of the time and we actually had to wrap things up and get out of the sun.
Dad did have his camera and was clicking away, but it seems that he forgot to put film in the camera. Oopsie Poopsie!!!
We stayed in Independence that night. Normally we would have stayed in Lone Pine but there was an ultra-marathon in town. The Badwater to Whitney portal foot race in the middle of July has got to be the craziest test of endurance I have ever heard of. The race is 135 miles from the lowest elevation in north America (Badwater is -280' below sea level to Whitney portal at 8360'. You can read about it here:
badwater.com
Anyway, no hotels in Lone Pine so we stayed in Independence in Ray's Den Motel. Worst part about Lone Pine is that EVERYTHING shuts down early in that town. I had no place to go to get a Pepsi. Argh!!!
Aunt Mary and I stayed up late packing her bag. She had too much stuff and I had already eliminated all of JXN's and my unnecessary bulk (more on that later).
We didn't rush in the morning as our plan was to go only to Lone Pine Lake at 10,000' It is about 3 miles from the Whitney Portal and we wanted to aclimate one night there before heading to Consultation lake for our second night. Our plan was to summit on our third day (Which would be today). We were going to spend our third night at Consultation Lake as well and then head back on sunday (tomorrow).
We left Whitney Portal around noon on Thursday and took a very leisurely pace to Lone Pine Lake. One thing that we learned last year was that carrying too much water can make the hike difficult. There is plenty of water along the route all the way up to the switchbacks, so all that is really needed is one liter. We filled up our bottles at a waterfall that is about 1/4 mile from Lone Pine Lake. I used a steripen (UV water purifier) to purify the three liters of water we collected. Then we headed to Lone Pine Lake, arriving around 4pm. I did make some pack changes about one mile into the hike. JXN was struggling a bit, so I put his cloths and sleeping pad on my pack.
Once JXN's load was lightened a bit, he set the pace which pretty much wore me out. Aunt Mary, who at 65 still runs 1/2 marathons, kept up nicely.
When we got to LPL, I set up camp. We were the only people camping at LPL, which was very nice. We got a little fishing in, but didn't catch a thing. JXN started to feel a bit off with a pounding headache, so I had him rest in the tent and had him drink as much water as he could while I cooked dinner (mmmm, mac & cheese). He started to get the shivers, so I had him get in his sleeping bag. Once he got some food in his belly he started to feel better and was quite antsy once the sun went down.
Oh, btw, if you have verizon, if you go out on the eastern edge of Lone Pine Lake and look over the cliff, you can get one bar and make phone calls.
Anyway, it was pretty dark out so we decided to get a game of cribbage in...I won. We were going to play again, but after the hike with the packs, the sitting position in the tent was uncomfortable so we decided it was time for lights out. JXN fell asleep quickly, followed by Aunt Mary. The military jets out of China lake or Edwards were flying non-stop and this made it pretty difficult for me to get to sleep. Around 1am, JXN woke up coughing..after 1.5 hours of trying to clear his cough up, he finally fell asleep. Aunt Mary didn't stir the whole time. I was worried there was something wrong with her, but she just had earplugs in and was tired. I'm pretty sure that I didn't sleep at all on Thursday night. Both JXN and Mary slept in until 8:30am.....I was jealous.
I got up around 6:45am, made myself some oatmeal and went off to call Lisa from the eastern cliff. When I got back, did a few more things around camp and did some fishing. I was trying out a lure with this cheapie mini fishing rod and spinning reel and when I did my cast, the reel slipped off the pole and into 20' of water. So now we just had a little mini-pole and some line and a couple of hooks. I knew that JXN wanted to fish more when he woke up, so I tied some line to the tip of the rod and attached the hook (with swivel). We were pretty much stuck with salmon eggs at this point.
Eventually, Mary and JXN woke up and while Mary and I were making breakfast, JXN went fishing...it wasn't long before he yelled out that he caught one. It was a beautiful golden trout, about 9" long. I took the hook out and let it go before I had a chance to take a photo. JXN told me how he had just thrown the hook "out there" and it bit right away. So I said "like this?" and did the same thing..within about 30 seconds I had a nice little rainbow on the line. I also let that one go. JXN ended up catching one more golden and two more rainbows. All were released.
JXN's belly wasn't feeling 100% so we were delaying going anywhere yet. Consultation lake is only 3 miles from LPL, so as long as we broke camp by noon we would have plenty of time to get there, set up camp and cook dinner.
I had camp pretty much broken when the storm clouds started rolling in over the summit. THis is pretty normal in July, but they were coming in thicker than I had expected. With JXN not feeling 100% and the thunderheads actually spitting out drops of rain at our location, we made the decision to head downhill. We kept up a nice pace going down, making whitney portal just two hours after we left LPL.
When we got to my Dad's hotel, the entire summit was socked in and it was clearly storm conditions, not just normal high altitude summer showers. If we had decided to stay and try for the summit we would have been miserable and would have had to turn back from a higher altitude.
Here are a couple of pix from the trip
picasaweb.google.com
Aunt Mary and I are going to attempt to summit in one day again later this summer. |
