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This trip was a small reunion for us guys, B.J., John, Josh, and me. Although Josh couldn’t make it to Mount Whitney we still had a fun, tiring time. B.J. flew in from Florida, John from South Carolina, Josh lives in LA, and me from Dallas. John’s flight was delayed and didn’t arrive until about midnight which ended any chances of us getting any sleep. From the airport, we drove to Lone Pine and arrived at our hotel at 4:20 in the morning. We were able to sleep for almost 2 hours, not nearly enough. After waking up, we met Spike and Elizabeth at a small restaurant for breakfast to stuff ourselves before we had to eat MRE’s for our next several meals. We then picked up some extra gear for John and our bear canisters. At 11:30, we started hiking from Whitney portal with our goal of making it to outpost camp. We realized after gearing up and walking about 30 feet up the trail how hard the hike would be. It’s not too different from walking up flights of stairs for miles all while carrying a heavy pack. We finally made it to Lone Pine Lake where we had our first meal. After eating, we packed up and headed for Outpost camp, the first of two camps along Whitney trial. Making it to the campsite, we setup our tents, chatted for a bit, then tried to sleep. The freezing cold, hard ground, and animals outside made it rather hard to sleep. We woke early, maybe around 5 am. We left some our gear behind and started up the trail again. We were really amazed by Mirror Lake and the view back down the mountain towards Lone Pine. We hiked a little more, to 11,000 feet where we had another meal. The wind picked up a bit here and the temperature was below freezing since our water was freezing up towards the end of the tube. With only small jackets on since we left our bigger jackets at camp thinking it would warm up, we decided we should turn around. We also talked to another hiker coming down from the summit who said the conditions were a lot worse. Although we wanted to summit, it just wasn’t the right time, not having all of our gear, enough time, and worn out. I would rather have the chance to go back next year than to never have a second chance. In all, we did about 9 miles and reached 11,000 feet.

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