Mt. Whitney 2007 Report Day 1

First let me start by saying the the whole Mt. Whitney trip was a blast. We all had fun during the drive up to Lone Pine, eating breakfast, camping and hiking. Everybody was in a good mood and we were laughing and joking all the time. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much.

Once we all arrived at Lone Pine and checked into the Dow Villa, five of us drove up to Horseshoe Meadows for a warm-up hike. This is the place I camped at last year and I thought everyone would enjoy hiking at 10,000 feet. We hiked for about one hour and then headed back down. After about 10 minutes of driving down the steep hill, we smelled the smell of hot breaks. So we pulled over and sure enough the breaks were smoking hot. So we sat by the side of the road for 15 minutes waiting for the breaks to cool while amusing ourselves by throwing rocks over the hill.

For dinner that night we ate at Seasons, where I had a nice big pasta dish. Just as we started to eat, these two men from the table next to us who had been drinking wine came over and asked us if we were hiking Whitney the next day. Then they told us how they just flew in from San Diego to the local airport and hiked the Whitney trail in one day. We were trying to nice, be we just wanted to eat!

We all turned in early because our new plan was to wake up at 4:30 AM so we could eat breakfast and start hiking by 6:30. We wanted to keep the option open to hike to Trail Camp, and if the weather was good, attempt a summit that afternoon. Not everyone was up for that idea, but either way, getting an early start is always good. After a good, hardy breakfast, we left the hotel for Whitney Portal with our backpacks and hiking shoes. We started hiking, I think around 7:00 AM. I say "I think", because lots of the details of this trip are kind of blurry. For some reason I don't have as good memory of this hike as I would expect. I'm blaming it on the altitude. Anyways, after hiking six miles (or more due to the side trip to Lone Pine Lake for some of us) with 35+ pound backpacks, we got to Trail Camp around 1:00 PM. The weather was cool, with partly cloudy skies the whole way up. Shortly after we set up our tents, it started to get dark and cold, which can only mean one thing - rain. It rained and hailed on and off all afternoon, so no summit trek this day. The rain wasn't that bad, plus it gave us an excuse to crawl into our tents for an afternoon nap. We had plenty of time to get ready for the next day, including filtering water and preparing our dinner.


Trail Camp, which is located at 12000 feet and above the tree line, wasn't very crowded, and we had a good spot up against a rock face to protect us from the wind. After we boiled water for our dehydrated dinners, we sat and talked until about sunset. Then as we were ready to turn in for the night, the people camping next to us returned from their summit hike. They told us that there was a hiker that was suffering from just about everything, including altitude sickness. He had tried to summit in one day, and for some reason he didn't bring anything, meaning no food, water or equipment. They had helped him down the switchbacks, which took 3 hours. At Trail Camp, the unprepared hiker rested on a rock for a while. Everybody at the camp was concerned about him and around 8:30 he finally headed down with a flashlight, food, water and an emergency blanket given to him by other campers. We talked to someone the next day who saw him that night around 11PM at Outpost Camp and he slept there. I hope he made it out OK. I posted this on the Whitney Portal Store forum, and someone said this happens every day during the peak hiking season.

By 8:30 I attempted to go to sleep. I was worried about the hiker and had trouble getting to sleep. I finally got some sleep and then around 11PM I woke up for a pee break. When I opened up my tent, I thought I so Jim standing outside his tent, but he wasn't moving. I whispered "Jim?". I also smelled smoke in the air. I walked out of my tent and Jim was watching some men standing around a fire that they started where the solar toilets used to be. The rangers had been there during the day doing work and left their tools, including axes. These men were burning something and using axes to chop up wood and other stuff. This also worried me as I thought they might be crazy hikers who were going to terrorize the camp ground later with those axes. Well, they didn't and I managed to fall back asleap. At least I was lucky enough to be outside at night where the sky was clear and the stars were brighter than I've seen in years. The Milky Way was so vividly visible I wish I had stayed out longer. But my watch alarm was set for 4:40 AM and I needed all the sleep I could get for the next day - our summit hike!