Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Death Valley to Whitney' summit !

This past weekend, I witnessed one of the dumbest, yet most impressive physical feats I have ever seen. Two of my friends, Brian Decker (aka Dusty Dog) and his friend Rocky, rode their bikes from the depths of hell, I mean Badwater Death Valley, to the Whitney Portal in two days time. Since that didn't seem to be difficult enough, we set out at four thirty a.m. in order to summit via the MR Route. I am pleased to say everyone successfully made it to the summit and finished a series of very torturous days. Needless to say, they decided they would never repeat that trip again...

Awesome. I want to do that some day. Great job!

Isn't there an annual Badwater 100 ultramarathon that runs (literally) from Death Valley to Whitney Portal? And don't some of the real head-case runners continue on to the summit just so they can say they ran from the low point to the high point of the lower 48 all in one stretch?

...glad I'm not that nuts...

Yes, Badwater runs 135 miles from Badwater to the Portal. A recent female winner did it in 27 hours and change.

An interesting thing happened to me yesterday. As we were starting about 5:00 am to do the MR there was a 52 year old man starting up the regular trail. We met 6 1/2 hours latter on the top. I was feeling pretty good about the day and our accomplishment......then we struck up a conversation with the older guy. He had just completed the badwater to Whitney 135 mile marathon in 52 hours. It started monday morning. The winners came in around 25-27 hours I believe. He had slept only a few hours the last 3 nights and run/ walked 135 miles (hottest temperature was 132 degrees) and he still matched our time to the top.......he commented even I could do it....if I got "in shape"

yeah, that Badwater run was from July 12-14, and ends at the Portal. We hiked Whitney and came down on the 13th around 10am as the winners were coming through. They finished 135 miles in around 28 hours. Crazy stuff.