Made it to the top of Mt. Whitney for sunrise! I was hoping to have company on the trek, but there weren’t many of us. I set my alarm for 12:30 am and got rolling out of camp at 1. It was a little over seven and a half miles to the peak, gaining almost 4000 feet to a total of 14,505 which is the tallest mountain in the lower 48.
It was a little disconcerting to be doing all that hiking in the dark. And it was DARK dark with no moon to be seen. I turned my headlamp off at one point to see the stars and yeah I would have had no chance finding the trail.
The top itself… was actually a little disappointing. It was cool to be that high and get a decent view of the surrounding mountains, that’s for sure. But the sunrise? Eh. Wasn’t any more special than a sunrise from any other decent viewing spot (except for the effort I knew it took to get there, four hours of hard hiking in the dark).
Once I had taken my pictures and posted my last five blogs at once I headed down, trying not to be too frustrated that I had only gotten 3/4 hours of sleep for a sunrise I didn’t feel was worth it. But then I rounded a corner and had a perfect, serendipitous moment – 14000 feet up, on day 54, I ran into my old coworker Blair about a mile from the summit!
Blair is the kind of guy I would love to run into anywhere and it would put a smile on my face, but in that moment the timing could not have been more perfect. He was summiting Whitney from the other direction too, so we only had the same trail for about two miles. It was such perfect timing it made me feel great about all my timing choices so far, from the getting up at 12:30 to the extra zero day last week to the pace I’ve had up till now. I was glowing the whole way back to the campground.
Then I thought about getting in 5ish more miles but napped hard, basically from 11-4. It means I’ve got a longer day tomorrow to set up my 15 off-pct miles to resupply, but I think my body needed the rest.
Had enough photos I’m going to try a gallery:
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