Day before yesterday I decided I should drive to California and climb Mount Whitney. Immediately.
Whitney is 14,500' tall and the highest point in the US outside of Alaska. A significant portion of book three of my Christmas fiction trilogy happens there and as I reached that point in writing the book, I realized that I needed to know the mountain first hand to continue writing.
So this trip is really just a research project.
We leave Sunday afternoon, if all goes according to plan. Back Wednesday or Thursday. I'll let ya know how it goes....
The trip got delayed a week to fit my friend’s work schedule. Good thing! I just spent the day doing a rescue up Timp (much steeper than Whitney even though we didn’t even climb 3,000′, not quite reaching 10,000′ below the breakover to Hidden Lakes) and I might be sore. I need a massage!
what happened up there? I saw the pictures on facebook! There were some really nice shots! Looks so pretty up there. 🙂
Three people planned to sleep in the hut at Emerald Lake…but it was gone! Actually, it’s totally buried in snow, and probably will be for another month or two.
So they headed back down in the dark but got caught above cliffs. In the morning, one hiked down and we went up for the others, one of which didn’t think she could walk, but once we got her moving with one of us on either side for support, her leg warmed up and within half an hour was walking just fine on her own.
And I wasn’t sore after all, even though me and another guy went back up half a mile to fetch her snowshoes which fell off the pack someone else was carrying. We found one and then were told to turn around since the snowpack was warming and avalanche danger might rise. We had just reached the steepest part and didn’t complain.