Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Photos from 9/15/03 Summit hike

I did my first Whitney summit a few weeks ago and am just getting around to posting. It was a great adventure. We were on the trail 5 days and 4 nights. Started at Horseshoe Meadows and finished at the Portal. We went cross country from Lower Soldier Lake but avoided the Sand Hill. Actually, we missed the Sand Hill and went by way of the Crabtree Lakes.

Pictures of the trip are below along with other photos if anyone is interested.

http://community.webshots.com/user/arlan13

Great Pictures Arlan. Thanks

I have always wanted to a similar trip. Could you post details of your route and where you camped each night,

Deamonguy...We left Horsehose Meadows about 10 AM on Monday and hiked in through the Cottonwood Lakes. We made camp the fisrt night just below New Army Pass at Long Lake. The next day we took it real easy and made camp at Lower Soldier Lake. Both those camps had good trees and it was easy to set up my Hennessy Hammock. The third night we camped at Upper Crabtree Lake and I suspended my Hammock between two large boulders. It is in one of the photos. The hike between Lower Soldier and Upper Crabtree was very interesting being cross country and with no trail to follow. Crabtree pass was a bit rough, especially going down to upper Crabtree Lake. The route between Upper Crabtree and Crabtree Lake was a lot of boulder hoping but was fun. The fourth night we planed on camping at one of the stone shelters just below Trail Crest. We had never seen them but had been told they existed. Well, we ran out of day light about an hour or more before our destination but were able to locate one of the shelters in the dark. I slept on the ground that night and do not want to do that again. I don't see how you guys can handle tent and tarp shelters. Temperatures droped to 19 degrees that last night and I had a light coating of ice on my bag. I wondered all night if I would have frozen water in the morning but only about a quarter inch of ice developed and my Camelbak tube was frozen. We left for the summit about 8 AM and ten or so hikers were decending as we went up. Seems they started from the portal at different times the night before. At the summit there were only two other people. That was nice. On the way down there must have been 60 or 70 people on their way up. It was a great trip. Only my second backpacking adventure. Not bad for 56 years old, LOL

If I seemed to go on about my Hennessy Hammock it is because I love that thing. It is more comfortable than some beds I have owned and sleeping in the wilderness is an absolute pleasure in it.

The route we took was very cool and challenging for an old timer. I am looking forward to some thing similar next year.

Hope this answered some of your question.

Arlan

I like the picture of your HH suspended on the boulders. I've been contemplating trying a hammock but wondered about what to do above treeline. It looks like that setup worked out OK. It's easier to find rocks than flat spots, probably.

What did you use for insulation under your bag (and what kind of bag)? What were the wind conditions like?

For cold weather I use a Big Agness sleep system. If you are not familiar the Big Agness Bag has no insulation on the bottom, just an envelope that holds a self-inflating pad. I read on a lot of the backpacking sites about how guys are attempting to stay warm in the hammocks and they have all kinds of concoctions they are experimenting with. Some successfully, some not. It all seems like a huge hassle they are going through though. With the BA I just throw it in there and crawl in. The pad stays put and I stay comfortable and warm. The coldest temperature I have slept in has been 27 degrees. That was recorded with my multifunction watch hung from the ridgeline inside the hammock. I imagine it may have been a couple degrees colder outside. The bag I was using is the BA Zirkel rated at 20 degrees and a 1” self-inflating pad also rated at 20 degrees. I also wore a lightweight top, lightweight tights and smart wool socks. I was plenty warm and figure I could go colder by wearing a mid weight or heavier top and bottom.

You mentioned wind? The first night at Long Lake the wind blew like the devil. It sucked. The fly got to flapping pretty good and thinking back I should have gotten up and removed it. The sides of the hammock come up high enough to give fair protection from the wind. If it were to have windy when we made camp I could have possibly picked a better location.

Arlan,

Spectacular panoramas!!!!
I recently purchased Canon's latest Digital Rebel SLR camera, and I'd would like to take panorama shots like yours atop Mt. San Jacinto in Southern California next month. Would you please give the basic techniques on taking great panorama shots.

Many Thanks,
Gilbert M.

Gilbert...with just a little practice it is easy to do panoramas with a digital camera. Allot of digital cameras have a panoramic aid built into them although I no longer use that. Seems the LCD is too difficult to see in direct sunlight. When shooting panoramas I just pan from left to right leaving about 1/3 of the previous frame in each succeeding shot and panning as level as possible. Almost all of my panoramas are done without using a tripod. On the trail I use a Canon Powershot 400. It is a great little camera. I looked at your Canon Digital Rebel SLR at Fry's the other day. I was very impressed. I also have an Olympus e-10 Digital SLR but favor my Canon these days. The software stitches the images together for you and is important. I'm not sure I like the software that came with the Canon camera though. I am using MGI Photo Suite 4 to do my images but there are allot of programs out there. I don't know which one is the best.

Good luck with it and have fun.

Great photos! How did you manage to get the summit hut with no one else in the shot?!

Gilbert, I've been doing panoramas a lot recently. I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 which has a "photomerge" feature.

One thing I've found is that it greatly simplifies things (and improves the results) if you can lock the exposure settings for each shot. I don't know how to do that with my camera (and maybe it's not possible) and I have a lot of cases where the colors of the sky and rocks change dramatically from shot to shot (mostly due to changes in the relative position of the sun). This leads to very noticable banding in the merged panorama.

I'm sure you can lock the settings on you digital SLR and get uniform exposure and white balance as you pan.

Thanks Arlan,

It make me want to go back.

Tre