Simply Salas: Mt. Whitney Hike

Well as many of you are aware, I have been preparing for the Mt. Whitney hike for several months and I can happily say I did it! The total hike distance was 22 miles with over 6,000' of elevation gain over two days. It was an amazing hike with excellent weather and fantastic views.

This all started when Uncle Arthur alerted family members that he had been accepted; through the lottery process, to have permits to climb Mt. Whitney. I had never really thought of climbing Mt. Whitney but after researching it, I quickly saw that this was going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity and I signed up.

I have been training to do a half century bike ride so I thought that my bike riding would make great cross training which it mostly did. Before the hike, I was able to get in two hikes up Adam's canyon with my backpack but I really should have done much more hiking.

The trip started out with a quick stop in Cedar City where I dropped Debra off to stay with her mom and pick up Michael to go with me on to Las Vegas where Arthur joined us. Then it was on to California to the base of the mountain. We acclimated to the high altitude of 10,000' for the first night at Onion Valley campground. We were all a bit apprehensive about the upcoming hike, so we lightened our packs with anything we thought we could do without. In the end, I was hiking with a 30 lb backpack. The following day, we started at Whitney Portal which is the official entrance of the hike. We started early in the morning and took it easy so that we would not burn out early.

The first part of the trail was beautiful with plenty of shade from the forest as well as lakes and streams that followed the trail. By mid-day we passed the tree line and made our base camp at 12,000'.

We made our dinner of dehydrated food then settled in for a cool night with temperatures that dropped below freezing. I don't know if my lack of sleep that night was due to the cold temperatures or knowing that we still had over 2,500 feet of climbing still to go.

The next morning we were off again with the next accomplishment being the 96 switchbacks that took us to trail crest at 13,777'. At this point we could finally see the other side of the mountain which was Sequoia National Park. We continued our trek, sometimes though snow covered trails until we reached the summit and celebrated our accomplishment.

At the top I sung happy birthday to Brian as promised (I hope he heard me) and then took in the sights. It was amazing, we could see for hundreds of miles in all directions. After about 45 minutes of enjoying the top we began our decent. At times, I thought going down was harder than going up. We were tired and the trail kept going on and on as we worked our way back to base camp where we picked up our tents, sleeping bags and packs. After breaking camp, we continued down the trail to the portal. We would have celebrated our accomplishment but we were all exhausted and just glad to be finished.

What is next? Maybe the Grand Canyon - Rim to Rim, we will just have to see.