Day 71
Today's Miles: (15 Miles Extra Credit)
Our original plans were to wake up at 2am and summit Mt. Whitney just before sunrise. But with the stories of how cold those who did this before us were, we decided to hike up in the daylight and enjoy the trip a bit more. We are happy we did.
We ended up breaking camp at about 6:30am and began to trek to the backside of Whitney.
Timberline Lake (this is one of my favorite photos of the trip so far)
Shortly after Timberline Lake, we hiked past Guitar Lake where another group of PCT hikers was waking up for their trip up Whitney as well.
From Guitar Lake we began the series of switchbacks up the mountain and started to climb...quick. The views from this trip were absolutely amazing, so we have a lot of pictures to share.
Camshaft making his way up with Twist close behind.
Just shy of 2 miles from the summit we hit the junction where the portal side trail and the trail we had taken merged. From there it got a little more crowded but that didn't stop us from enjoying every second of the view.
There was only about 30 steps of snow on the way up...so naturally we all had to take photos there!
We summited at 10:30am after 4 short hours of hiking (and a lot of picture taking) and took about 2 hours at the summit to take it all in.
Looking over the Owens Valley.
It seemed like thousands of feet straight down from the cliffs at the top.
Myself, Camshaft and Twist celebrating the climb.
It was amazing to look out over the desert in one direction and turn around and see the High Sierra in the other.
Twist enjoying the view.
The first batch of hikers for the day.
After a couple hours at the summit, we started our descent back down to Crabtree Meadow. On the way back we got to re-experience all the views of the climb, this time all while strolling downhill.
We got back to camp at about 3:30pm and were pretty tired, so we decided to camp in the same spot as last night and get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow we go over Forester Pass, the highest point on the PCT, a day after being at the highest point in the continental U.S.
-Tailgate
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