Mount Whitney

There is something about climbing tall peaks that makes you rethink your life choices. 

It was eleven PM when my alarm went off. You’ve got to be kidding me. Was my first conscious thought that day. I tried not to give myself time to think and instead just started moving. 

We had two creeks to cross that night. Both within the first two miles of our hike. We probably should have just taken our shoes off and crossed carefully, but it was pretty impossible to convince any of us to willingly dipping our feet into the cold alpine streams. 

About an hour into our expedition we rose above the treeline and hiked into the basin of Mt Whitney. Stars lit up the night sky. The Big Dipper hung over the shadowed mountain towering over us. The trail walked around an alpine lake whose water gently waved at us from the shoreline. a cold and steady breeze blew over the lake, obscuring the milky way’s reflection on its dark waves.

Above us there were dozens of headlamps floating up the mountainside, looking like UFOs. The switchbacks were steep and endless. There was always one side of the trail that dropped off into black nothingness. One wrong step and you’re going down. This was enough to keep me awake and alert even though I was working on an hour and a half of sleep. 

We reached the summit trail junction around four o clock. Behind schedule. The climb was slower than we had hoped. The night sky was now a deep blue and the mountains were. It was time to hustle. 

Those last few miles seemed to take forever. Dawn began peeking over the mountains that were once nothing but a dark wall began to come into view. An orange glow dropped over those snowy cliffs and the sky grew a brighter shade of blue. 

As we neared the summit, the trail walked by several huge openings in the rising ridgeline, making for windows looking east. During these small stretches of trail we were able to catch a glimpse of the sunrise. 

Soon after we finally made it to the top. 

Lizzy and I didn’t linger too long at the peak. Ate some bars, took some pictures and tried not to fall asleep. After about an hour we began to head down. There are several tricky and exposed switchbacks on the approach trail to Whitney. These freaked me out going up in the dark. All you could see was the narrow trail dimly lit by your headlamp and then blackness on one side. As if you would fall into some abysmal nothingness should you slip. Though seeing the thousand foot cliffs with jagged rocks below on the way down wasn’t too calming either. 

It was sometime midway down the mountain I turned to Lizzy and said, “I think this is the most beautiful place I have ever seen to and I have no capacity to appreciate it.” 

We ended up hiking another 5 miles after reaching the base of Whitney. I could barely tell I was walking by the end of it. We trudged through another couple of creek crossings so we wouldn’t have to do them first thing in the morning. Taking off my trail runners at the end of the day never felt so good. And it was probably only a minute or two that between the time I laid down and the time I fell asleep that night.