Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Mt.Whitney for the very first time

I backpacked up to the summit of Mt.Whitney this past weekend, with 2 of my good friends. we recently moved to California and decided to take on Mt.Whitney We had a great time and want to thank all those who share their experience / advice on these boards.


Pics :
http://picasaweb.google.com/carthick/MtW...feat=directlink


Details :
Total distance 22 miles, elevation gain 6197ft

Friday :
Started at trailhead @ Whitney Portal 4.30pm (8,300ft)
Reached Outpost camp @ 8.30pm. elev (10,300ft)
Setup camp for night

Saturday :
started towards the summit at 8am
reached summit 4pm (14,497ft)
returned to camp @ 10pm

Sunday :
Start back to Trail head : 9.30am
Reached portal @ 12noon



Thanks
~Karthik

Thank you for the kind words in your e-mail.

I also remember crossing paths with you two, although I don't remember where. (Guessing it was on the Switchbacks.)

Congratulations on a successful trip. I don't think I'll ever get tired of looking at photos and visiting this special place in person.

Karthik, beautiful pictures. Congratulations on the summit.

-Rudy

Those pictures are very nice. Congratulations on a great trip to a beautiful place.

Congrats! and very nice pictures!
The one picture looking down on Lone Pine Lake like a blue-sky jewel in front of the alpenglow on the Inyo Mountains across the Owens Valley is perhaps one of the finest pics I have seen of Lone Pine Lake.

CaT

Congratulations and nice pictures.

I noticed that it appeared you went in on day permits. I wonder home many people take the risk of not getting caught? When we went up on 8/3 we saw 3 other people with no permits. Does anyone know what happens if you get caught staying overnight on a day permit or going into the Whitney Zone with no permit?

To the best of my knowledge it was a overnight permit (for 2 nights) I still have the permit on my backpack and will confirm later today, but nothing on the permit mentions anything about being a day permit or a backpacking permit.


our permit looked like this :(different color)

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1329/1460773149_217a312534.jpg?v=0

I saw that the 4th photo on your pictures link showed a woman with an orange permit which was the same color as our day permit. The blue permit that you posted in your reply is an overnight tag.

But that does not make any sense ? why would the ranger at the visitor center issue us permits for a day permit at 4.30 pm ?

our tag read 7/31/09 why would she issue a day permit at 4.30pm on 7/31/2009 ??? We had reserved our overnight permits.

if orange means "day permit" and blue means "overnight" what does yellow mean ?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbuss/1244704669/

how difficult would it be to print the word "day permit" or "overnight" ?

I see that the tags that you have shown pictures of all have a year of 2007, so something really does not make sense. All of the overnight tags that we saw on 8/3/09 were blue and all of the day tags were orange.

thanks for the detective work, but i just called Inyo National Forest and spoke to the supervisor, and confirmed we had overnight permits!

(the pics i shared are what i found online, not my tags which were issued on 7/31/2009)

MikeT: High altitude doesn't give me a headache, but your blogging of the color coded tag is giving me a headache right now.

Congradulation carthick, next time try the North Fork trail (mountaineer's route) it is color tag free zone!!!

What he said. It's water under the bridge! Let them enjoy their post-hike experience.

Again, congrats to the both of you, carthick. I, too, was going to suggest the MR next time.

CaT

uhhmmmm - actually toe tags apply to MR also