Mount Whitney via the Mountaineers Route
On Sunday September 24th 2006 four of us climbed Mount Whitney via the Mountaineers route. Our plan was flexible about whether we would descend via the Mountaineers or the Whitney trail and we ended up doing the latter. We left the portal (roughly 8300 feet) at 5:00 A.M and summited 14,497 Mt Whitney at 10:45. We didn't hang around too much as having driven up from sea level the day before we were all feeling the effects of the altitude. We took the 11 mile Whitney trail down and got back to the Portal at 3:00. Approximately 18 miles and 6000 feet of elevation left us all worked. Great weather and good partners made for a great time!
Starting out early, we hiked in the dark for about 1.5 hours. Unfortnately I didn't get any pictures of the Ebersbacher Ledges, as they were pretty cool, but it was pretty dark. We did get to see the sunrise over Lone Pine and as we reached Lower Boyscout Lake, the alpenglow was starting. For the next 30 minutes or so we had a tremendous show. As we approached Upper Boy Scout Lake we had several creek crossings that were frozen over. The frozen waterfall was stunning.
As we climbed out of Upper Boyscout, we left treeline and started to route find up to Iceberg Lake and the chute to take us up past the East Face. You can see Ben pondering when all the advil he has taken are going to stop his headache.
Up onto the plateau with Iceberg Lake we get an awesome view of Whitney and the approach we are to take. There are several climbers already on the East Face, we will be taking the gully, or chute as it is called to the right of the East Face. It had more snow in it than we had expected so we spent a good deal of time scrambling around. This was by far the most strenuous part of the ascent as you get to the base of the chute at approximately 12,500 feet and climb another 1,500 or so over a relatively short distance. The rock fall was a potential hazard, so we would stage carefully, and therefore slowly up the route.
Here are more pictures of the chute. We are looking back down towards Iceberg Lake in one. Ben is trying to find cover from potential rockfall in one and failing miserably.
About halfway to three quarters up the chute I took some pictures of what we had left to go, and what was behind us. When we reached the notch at the top of the chute we thought we had a mild scramble and hike to the summit, but were instead met with an exposed traverse to a place we hoped to access the summit plateau. We made our way across the remaining snow bands carefully and climbed up on the summit plateau. We had thought we had about another 1,000 feet or so but saw some guy staggering around carrying only an almost empty nalgene and looking totally out of place. We asked him how far and he pointed to the summit hut in the distance. Now who looked like the idiots?
We didn't spend too much time on the summit as being sea level people, the elevation was messing with us all. I didn't have a headache like the others, but was fuzzy in the head. When I signed the log book, I had to think carefully how to spell "Mountaineers". After taking the group shot and panoramic view shots we decided to head down the Whitney Trail. It was 11 miles down as opposed to 7 miles down the Mountaineers, but was non-technical and downclimbing the chute and the traverse, would have taken twice as long as coming up the conditions the way they were.
The Whitney trail was nice. Having never come up it, I wanted to see what it was like anyway but was glad to have come up the way we came. There were tons of people coming up the trail and lots of determination. We got down the trail and were in the car by 3:15. 10 hours on the trail an home in Santa Barbara by 8:30 that night.
