Trip Photos:
First, I'd like to say that the pancake of epic proportions was everything I thought it would be, and more. Second, after three tries to summit Mt. Whitney, I finally made it to the top! I think what made the difference this time was the “do Epic Sh*t” t-shirt I wore the whole time (about 4 layers deep). Channeling the inspiration of Moosetracks, my team and I made a full on assault of Mt. Whitney June 11-13.
Thursday night: retrieve permit, hit up Joseph’s for firewood, and rally at the backpacker’s campground. Snagged the best sites near the creek, set up shop, got the camp fire roaring, opened a bottle of wine, broke out the chocolate, and spent the rest of the night attempting to pop jiffy pop over the coals while the rest of the group showed up. (Thank you Doug for lending the corkscrew!!)
Friday morning: Up around 0500, two hours for everyone to break camp and hit the trailhead. Pack weight: 41lbs. Recent modifications to my pack list included swapping out heavy multi-tool for lighter pocket knife (with no cork screw for wine), less clothing (who needs to change, anyway?), pump for Steripen, book with IPOD Nano loaded with mountaineering audio book (bad idea: listening to book about people getting blown off Everest while in their tent sleeping before falling asleep in my tent on Mt. Whitney did not make for good dreams). Most of my team of six’s packs were less than 50lbs with one exception, we’ll call him Big 60. The hike to Outpost Camp was easy and we took our time, rested with packs off every hour, and arrived around lunch time. The weather report called for 20% chance of snow Friday night so we decided to camp low at Outpost camp and make a summit attempt the next morning. Set up camp, had lunch, took a nap, and then took the team over near the waterfall to hold a snow travel clinic in preparation for the next day. We showed them glissading and self arresting and each took turns practicing on the slope. After practice, dinner, then more sleep.
Saturday: The plan was to get up at 3AM and head out with day packs for the summit, but the wind had been howling all night and it was snowing. I knew as soon as we got above Mirror Lake, it would have been torture, so we decided to push back departure and see if conditions improved or worsened. 4AM still bad, 5AM starting to lighten up. 5:30: made the call to rally the team and make a summit attempt. Despite plans to leave quickly, didn’t hit the trail till almost 7AM. Just over 3 hours to Trail Camp, then the real fun began. Freeze thaw cycles had turned the snow chute up to Trail Crest in to what can only be described as a massive ice sculpture of the business side of a cheese grater. We attempted to go up the right side of the rocks, but there were no boot tracks and I felt like I was ice climbing a vertical face, so I moved over to the left side and found some pretty solid boot tracks. STAY LEFT PEOPLE!! I saw someone that had two ice climbing axes the next day and felt envious. They knew what’s up. Once we found the boot tracks, it was a slow, heart popping plod up to Trail Crest. It took somewhere around 3 hours from Trail Camp to Trail Crest. Reached Trail crest at 1:30pm. It all started to blur together at that point, but I remember running into people at Trail Crest on their way back that said at a minimum 3 hours round trip to the summit, but most likely 4, and looking at my watch to calculate what time that would put me back on the cheese grater. Then it occurred to me, the chute was already solid ice, so coming down after dark would not worsen the conditions, so we went for it. Total time to summit from Trail Crest: 3 hours. I’m not proud of summiting so late; most people would say it was stupid, but tell me you never did anything crazy in your life. It turned out that we may have been the only ones that got a view from the summit that day. Just as we approached the summit, the clouds broke and the sun came through. We rejoiced on top with a shot of bourbon (that Big 60 had successfully carried all the way to the summit without taking any Diamox) and some chocolate, and then hauled ass back toward Outpost Camp. We were back at Trail Crest at 6:30 PM and had butt cheeks on cheese grater shortly thereafter. The technique we used to get down the chute couldn’t be called glissading, or hiking. I’m not really sure it had a name, but glissading in established tracks was too fast because our axes wouldn’t dig into the ice, and glissading off track was excruciating due to frozen boot tracks everywhere (hence my term of endearment, the “cheese grater”). I think I spent half the time scooting down the steps and the other half doing some sort of self arrest position slide using my pick to slow me down. Either way, the sun went down as we reached Trail Camp and we hiked the last few miles in the dark with our head lamps making noise to alert the bears. We finally rolled into camp at around 10:00PM, tired, hungry, and victorious.
Sunday, we rose with the sun and the chirping birds, had a hot breakfast, packed up, and hiked out in just a single layer of clothing, smelling WAG-tastic. Waiting for us at the trail head was one big ass pancake and a ton of fresh cut fries at the Portal Store. We ate it all and got to visit with Doug for a while - a great ending to a great adventure.
