Here is a short report of my whitney adventure:
Thursday morning, we left whitney portal and leisurely made our way to trail camp. Made it to trail camp by mid-afternoon. Spent the rest of the day exploring that area, including consultation lake. Great weather.
Friday morning, we left trail camp at 7am with our packs. We dropped our packs at trail crest at 8:30am and headed for the summit with small day packs. We reached the summit at 10am, took some pictures & enjoyed the view & talking with others at the top. Left at 11am. Arrived at trail crest again at 11:30am & ate lunch.
At noon, we went straight up to discovery pinnacle along the ridge, then down the infamous Sand Hill to upper crabtree lake. Gained about 2 lbs (no exageration) of sand & small pebbles in my boots. Upper crabtree lake is beautiful, and I gave my feet a nice treat by letting them soak in it's cold water. Beatiful area with steep cliffs everywhere.
At 1pm, we started heading up crabtree pass. There were about 5 separate "trails" heading up this steep ascent to the pass. Real confusing. Real hard. Real steep. But made it up in about 45 minutes.
With the awesome "huge blue lake" or whatever that lake is called right there, we thought it would be an easy jog down to it. Not quite. Took us an hour to get there by following a bunch of cairns that wisely took us up to and around the lake.
At about 3pm, we could see sky blue lake, our destination for the day. It looked like easy sailing down until we came up against a series of 50' cliffs. Went back to the last cairn we saw and followed the cairns around a giant loop that avoids all of the cliffs, and finally got to sky blue lake some 2 1/2 hrs later, at about 5:30pm. Didn't see that coming. Wish I had some warning about that one.
It was very windy at sky blue lake all night. Could hardly sleep it was so bad. The wind bent the poles to my tent & somehow took my ground cloth from under us. Never found it. Wind lasted from 9pm until 5am. Miserable.
At 7am, we headed out of sky blue lake. There was an easy trial heading down along Rock Creek. Followed it down to another trail that headed back up to Soilder Lakes. Beautiful terrain. Then followed the trail going up to New Army Pass. Got up the pass by 11am and somehow mysteriously ended up coming down Old Army Pass instead of New Army Pass. Not the end of the world, but I was a little shocked we somehow missed New Army Pass.
Ate lunch at on of the cottonwood lakes & made it to horseshoe meadows at 3:30pm.
Lessons learned:
I'd prefer never to go down the Sand Hill ever again, and I will never ever try to go up that hill unless an escalator gets installed.
How did I miss New Army Pass?
Follow the cairns. Someone wiser than you put them there.
