Mt. Whitney - Solo Dayhike First 14er

[lizolas]

June 30 - July 3, 2017

Prologue

Prior to this trip, I could count on one hand the number of times I'd been above 10,000 feet: Lassen Peak, Cathedral Peak, and possibly Round Top, where my group failed to summit. I had some notion that higher elevations make it harder to breathe - after being teased about my "huffing and puffing" on easy trad climbs in Tuolumne - but didn't have much experience doing strenuous hiking above 10,000' and just planned on an immediate turn-around if I developed worrisome symptoms of AMS.

Having finally decided to make use of what I had rather than waiting for "someday" with more ideal conditions, I turned my 20-year-old minivan into a camper.

The main feature is the bed, with a full size foam mattress on an 18" platform. I removed the rear bench seat but left the two middle seats, because my van requires unbolting things from the floor rather than conveniently detaching like newer models do.

The view from the driver's seat

I rearranged my schedule so I could leave at noon on Friday, hoping to get a head start on the predicted traffic disaster occurring for 4th of July weekend. I think the traffic occurred mostly north along I-5, and nobody was trying to beat the heat by driving to Bakersfield. After a stop for gas, food, and to replace my 3L Camelbak reservoir that I can never seem to keep track of, I was back on my way and heading up 395. I thought I’d planned this trip well, although in hindsight even without the last-minute rearranging, it was far too ambitious. I’d planned 4 long, strenuous hikes for 4 days, and would have had to drive home half the night after the last one.

For the first night, I had a reservation at Diaz Lake Campground in Lone Pine, with the plan to hike Olancha Peak the next day. Instead, the day before (Thursday) I’d checked the Whitney permit website on a whim and found permits available for Sunday. Obviously this opportunity was not to be passed up, so I claimed one, with a vague notion of what a terrible idea this was. This meant I had to pick up the permit on Saturday morning, and by the time I was done waiting in line at the Interagency Visitor Center, it was after 10.

I got to wait around at the campground until well after sunrise, since there was no point in driving to the Visitor Center too early

I decided to go make an attempt at Olancha Peak anyway - at the time still feeling like I couldn’t possibly justify all the gas money and driving time for just one peak - but starting at 11 in hundred degree heat even at 5800’ was a bad idea. A little over an hour in, I turned around from a combination of heat, struggling with exertion at higher elevation, and the realization that I should probably get to Whitney Portal sometime in the early afternoon to have any chance of sleeping before a 2-3 am trailhead deadline. I had service throughout Lone Pine, but stopped at McDonald’s on the way for some last-minute beta downloads over wifi rather than using my own data. Around 1:30 I left up Whitney Portal Road, and shortly after 2 I had arrived at the nicer, quieter campground I’d read about online.

The view from the campground parking lot

Creek? River? Stream? I'm never quite sure on the naming criteria. Anyway this campground had a nice one.

While making my trusty instant mashed potatoes, I first eyeballed 2 cups of water in the pan, then remembered I had a cup that doubles as a 2-cup measuring cup. I'd eyeballed it perfectly.

I set up my tent and tried to take a nap, but ended up just lying awake for an hour and a half before I got up to make dinner. The plan was to eat an early dinner, then a later dinner, but the later dinner never happened. I went to bed again at 9:30 with an alarm set for 2 am. I ended up only sleeping from about 10-midnight, then woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep. At 2, I got up and broke camp. In typical Liz fashion, I neglected to eat breakfast. I left my extra food in a parking lot bear box and arrived at the trailhead at 3. I didn’t really want to do the pre-dawn part of the hike totally alone, and planned to hang out at the trailhead for a bit to see if anyone else showed up that I could join. As luck would have it, there was a group of 6 there when I arrived, with 4 beginner hikers and 2 experienced ultramarathonners (I wouldn’t have joined a group of all advanced hikers for fear of slowing them down).

Somewhere along the trail portion of the hike, the 2 faster guys split from the slower beginner group. You’d think - if you ever hiked with me around sea level - I’d have been with them, but you’d be wrong. I’m not sure if it was the altitude, the lack of sleep/food, or some of both, but I started feeling nauseous and dizzy around 9,500’. We reached the lower camp just as the sun rose across a meadow, through a trail flooded with 6-8” of water. Most of the water crossings on the trail were very high, and I suddenly didn’t feel like Gore-Tex boots were such overkill. At the first crossing we came to, I stepped right into the water. The other woman behind me followed suit, in hiking shoes that likely didn’t even claim to be waterproof. Well, you can’t fix stupid.

First hints of sunrise over the Inyo-White Mountains

I got relatively few pictures of myself on the hike since I was alone for most of it

The last picture of me before I split from the group just as it got light enough to not worry about losing the trail in the dark

More sunrise

The sun finally came up during our break at the first camp area

The view toward Mt Whitney - not actually visible in this picture - from the meadow.

This section of the trail made me especially thankful for my waterproof boots

View of the mountains as the trail leaves the meadow and heads toward rock, rock, and more rock

We reached the snowfield at about 11,000’ and stopped to put on crampons. Shortly after that, I stopped even trying to keep up with the group of beginners - half of whom had stopped at the lower camp for a smoke break - and just trudged on at my own snail pace. I walked with my ice axe, but used it more as a walking stick than anything; at that point the angle was a steep trail, not really climbing a mountain. At the trail camp at 12,000’, I stopped to take a break from 10:20-10:40 and give myself a chance to eat some fruit snacks and rest a little before starting up the steep climb. A descending hiker I met told me that the Chute was starting to get too soft to safely/efficiently climb, and the recommended route was to crampon up the snowy portion of the switchbacks, then hike to the top of there.

Rock, rock, and more rock just before Trail Camp at 12,000'.

For most of the switchback portion, I climbed near 2 other couples. Both seemed fairly new to mountaineering gear, but were still moving far faster than I was. One couple seemed to have done the “Go to REI and buy everything you could possibly need” method, which was a fine approach for this trip with relatively little technical skill needed. The other couple, the Crossfit Couple, hadn’t even brought hiking poles with them. They borrowed sets of microspikes and hiking poles from the more prepared couple (and later bragged on social media that their superior physical fitness had allowed them to do the hike without any mountaineering gear).

"Climb Mt Whitney," they said. "It's just a hike," they said.

Throughout the hike, I found myself unable to correctly gauge how long I would take to get to the next milestone. 22 miles of hiking? I should be able to do that in 6-7 hours, right? Well ok, the altitude is making it harder, I should be finished in 10-12 though. Ehh, the repeated crampon removal and reattachments are taking time…. For the steeper uphill snow portions (see above image), I found that the only way to maintain the ability to continue was to take 10-20 steps, then rest for that many breaths. Essentially I was resting as much as I was walking. I got to the saddle at the top of the switchbacks at 1:30 and decided I no longer had a turn-around time - I was going to assume I’d at least make the summit and get back down the chute before dark, and from there the trail should be reasonably doable in the dark. I was also expecting, based on what other (clearly faster) hikers told me, to summit in about 2 hours from that point. On the rocky, steep trail from there, I was still stopping to take 10-20 second rests every minute or so. I felt sick and miserable the entire time but I knew I wanted that summit and turning around so close wouldn’t make me feel any better.

What do you call a Class 1 trail with Class 4 consequences for a stumble off the side?

Nearly everyone I passed on that section gave me their timing estimates, which seemed mostly useless, and told me I was almost there. I never want to hear that again in my life, and I will never repeat that unless I meet someone standing right under a summit block. I met the Crossfit Couple who told me that I should make sure I wasn’t the last one on the summit, even to the extent that I turn around less than a mile away if I met someone who said they were the last one coming down. Apparently they’d gotten off the cairn-marked trail (the cairns were another thing every descending hiker mentioned to me) on the way down and ended up on the wrong side of a snowfield. According to them, this caused nearly an hour delay trying to find the trail again. While I made up my mind to disregard their turn-around advice, I appreciated the concern. Nearly everyone I met on the trail that day seemed to care about the lone hiker idiot out by herself.

20 minutes from the summit (at which point I was willing to trust estimates given by descending hikers), I met the other couple I’d hiked with earlier. I was apparently not as singularly slow as I thought, because it had also taken them 13 hours to summit, they just left at 2:30 instead of 3:30 like I did. I finally summited at 4:30 pm, and got some pictures, then hurriedly left without remembering to sign the summit register. I guess that means I have to do it again sometime. There were at least a dozen other people when I got there, largely due to JMTers not having any time constraints for needing to be back to the car before dark. There was one other couple presumably going back the way I came. I left the summit before they did, and never saw them again.

Summit Photo Dump

Mt Whitney Survey Markers. I think there might be even more up there, but I didn't go poking around all that much given how late it was.

The Summit Hut, which I took a picture of but didn't actually visit.

Expansive views of the Sierra all around, since I'm taller than everything else here.

Photo proof of my summit

I'm trying to look accomplished, but the summit means the hike is only half over

Mt Whitney plaque at the summit. The elevation has since been revised to 14,505 feet or 14,508 feet, depending on which survey you believe.

I had planned on eating my avocado and crackers at the summit, but felt so awful that all I managed to eat was about ¼ of the avocado and 5 or 6 crackers about an hour before the summit, when I worried I was running out of fuel to keep going if I didn’t at least try to eat. At the summit I naively thought I should just go down and wait til I felt better, trying to gain as much ground as I could back to the trail before dark. The rocky trail was also not making me feel any less sick on the way down. I did end up making the same error as Crosssfit Couple, but I’m not sure what they were doing that it took them an hour to find the trail again. Maybe I just have a better sense of where I should be in relation to landmarks, but aiming past the snowfield to where I’d been relative to it before solved that problem in under 10 minutes.

The idea was that all my problems would basically be over by the time I reached the Chute and could glissade down. It turned out that the glissade was just another one of my problems. The slushy snow from earlier had refrozen into mostly ice. What should have been a 5-10 minute process of putting pants and jacket on and sliding down turned into about an hour of starting and stopping on the steep ice. When the angle turned low enough, I put on my crampons and just plunge stepped the rest of the way down.

As previously mentioned, beyond the normal concern for the well-being of other hikers, most people seemed especially concerned for a young woman out alone. I can’t really say they were wrong, although I don't think I was ever in any danger. As I approached the 12,000’ trail camp, someone came out and offered me water and snacks, saying the group there had been watching me and wondering if I was ok. I told them I was fine and had water and food with me, but I appreciated their concern. In reality, I should have had more to drink - I wasn’t running out of water, but once my Camelbak emptied I was too lazy to get out my remaining 1.5L bottle. It seems the trouble glissading had happened to multiple groups before me, although none of them were doing it in the rapidly setting sun like I was. There seemed to be much concern about me trying to make it all the way back that night. Several people tried to find a way for me to camp there, but I’m not sure how that would have worked, with no camping gear of my own and presumably nobody who had brought an extra sleeping bag just in case. The way I saw it, everyone who dayhikes it starts well before sunrise; what’s so bad about finishing well after sunset?

The haze in the air created a brown-tinged illusion of a sunset off to the east. In reality the sun was setting behind me as I made my way down.

More flooded trail crossings awaited on the descent, after the warm weather melted snow all day

Going down the defined trail of tracks in the snow went uneventfully. When I reached the rocky part, things got interesting. Even in daylight, that section had been somewhat tricky to navigate, involving a couple instances of backtracking from a dead end. I lost the trail, and was so sure I’d find it again if I just continued in the general direction I knew it went that I wouldn’t take a single step back uphill. When I finally started getting concerned that it was too dark to be thrashing around in the woods by myself, I’d gone too far to really remember where I’d come from, exactly. I decided the thing to do would be to follow a nearby stream and assume I’d come to a trail crossing sooner or later. Even in the type of terrain I’m used to, I think this wouldn’t have actually been a great idea, but in this steeper environment I quickly ran into an insurmountable waterfall over a large drop. Back uphill, I guess. I desperately looked for any signs of trail on the other side - with maybe some crying involved - until I spotted a line of headlamps farther downhill on the other side. I traced their general direction back up and saw what was an obvious switchback in the trail. I found a moderately reasonable looking place to cross the stream, then just jumped across. My legs got submerged almost to my knees, but my boots and softshell pants kept me completely dry for the brief time. I clawed my way up through some thorny bushes on the other bank and was safely back on the trail.

Within 15 minutes I caught up to the other hikers whose headlamps I’d seen. Two of them were the couple I’d last seen near the summit, and the woman actually called out “Liz?” as I was approaching. They said they’d been concerned for me and wondered if I’d make it down the icy glissade that had given them so much trouble. They also seemed shocked at my speed downhill. I do walk fast, I promise. It’s just uphill that I’m a snail.

Henrique was right. “Don’t do the Whitney trail. It’s too fucking long, especially on the way down.” When I met up with that group, we were 2.5-3 miles from the trailhead, but kept thinking it had to be less than a mile. Something about hiking in the dark seems to distort distance. Although thinking about the timing, the trail to the lower camp took at least a couple hours of darkness, it seemed like it should only have been about a mile. After the adrenaline of losing the trail and being out alone after dark faded, I felt like I was nearly falling asleep walking at the back of the group the rest of the way down. I felt dizzy and unstable making the creek crossings - even higher now from that day’s snowmelt - over rocks, but at that point I think it was exhaustion, not elevation.

I reached the trailhead at 10:30, almost exactly 19 hours round trip with 13 to summit and 6 to descend. I stumbled back to the car, loaded up the stuff from the bear box, and hoped the small amount of gas left in the tank would get me down the hill to a Lone Pine gas station. Who’d have thought that only 9 miles (steeply uphill) could drain over a quarter of a tank? From the gas station, I had no idea where to stay for the night. I’d thought maybe I would go and do an “easy” hike at White Mountain the next day, but I was in no condition to drive anywhere near the required 2 hours for that. I had a reservation for a campsite in Independence which I hadn’t cancelled because it was more expensive to cancel than to just eat the cost. I drove back to the Diaz Lake campground I’d stayed at Friday night and found no good way to pay when I arrived. The kiosk at the entrance only has options to pay for extra vehicles and such. For other transactions it refers you to the website, but that only has options in the future, and I’d arrived after midnight. I figured with my unused reservation elsewhere, Inyo County had at least gotten their money’s worth out of me, and drove to the site I’d been at previously.

I knew I should eat and drink something, but was too tired to do more than dig a gallon jug out of the trunk and drink about half a liter before passing out. The next morning I awoke, hungry and dehydrated, and didn’t feel like hiking at all. It was 6 already, and I had no real plan for where I thought I was going. Everything in the Owens Valley area was way too hot and dry. Tioga Pass had just opened the previous Thursday, and I considered Dana on the way home, but after a couple laps walking around the campground, I decided I was too sore from my glissading adventure to want to do anything serious. I waited around for a while, intending to pay for my site if a camp host or Ranger came around, but by 7:30 nobody had, so I left to stop by the Interagency Visitor Center, get a commemorative sticker, and leave. I’d wanted to visit the gift shop (and restaurant) in Whitney Portal, but that was obviously closed by the time I got back, and not worth another drive in the morning.

Next stop: pizza. I have this idea, developed after my Half Dome/Clouds Rest attempt last summer, that a large hike justifies eating as much of a Costco pizza as I can. I headed toward the Bakersfield Costco, envisioning myself stuffing half a pizza into my face, then taking the rest on the road. As it turned out, I wasn’t actually entirely recovered from the hike, and only managed to eat a slice and a half (of the double-cut whole pizza slices) before I gave up and packed it into the car.

I had to stop twice after that to take a break from driving and wake myself up. I didn’t really have to stop for food, with most of a pizza still in the car with me, but at one point a shake and fries sounded more appealing than pizza, so I stopped for that as well.

Eventually I got home in time to see my sister, who was at home for the weekend of the 4th, and part of the reason I decided to go back early rather than be miserable for a less impressive hike. Then I went to the gym because obviously you can’t skip ab day.

Lessons Learned:

Walking is hard. Breathing is hard. Eating is hard. Drinking is hard. Sleeping is hard.

Consider staying on the trail

More than one major hike in a weekend is probably too much. And what you think is a minor hike based on

mileage at sea level is very different at 6-14,000’.

Do some recovery movement the next day. You might still feel too awful for any real hiking, but you’ll feel better than you thought, and it helps before sitting to drive home.

I am so tired of being afraid