The alarm went off at 2:20am and we were in the car moments later from the Dow Villa Motel in Lone Pine (a kitschy, historical motel decorated with lots of John Wayne movie memorabilia) and headed towards the Whitney Portal, 11 miles up the road. I have never really hiked in the dark before, or worn a headlamp to climb up a mountain, especially a mountain of this magnitude. The very first time I went to Boulder, I drove from Chicago in one day with my college roommate Wendy, and after almost running over a coyote, we arrived in the middle of the night. Wendy used to always say that her “heart was in Boulder,” and as soon as we got there, we jumped out of the car, grabbed our sleeping bags and, in the dark of the night, hiked up steep hill. We just wanted to be under the stars in the mountain air, and when I woke up on the mountain, with the first rays of sunlight through the pine, I could understand completely why her heart was in the special town called Boulder. That was the last time I hiked in the dark.
But I was on Mt. Whitney tonight, and this was more than a walk up a foothill—it was an 11-mile trek to the summit of the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states, standing tall and proud at 14,594’ into thin air. There would be no sleeping on this mountain, just the continual and gradual steps forward to get to the top, and then 11 miles back down, all in one day. I made a promise to myself on my last birthday that I would climb a 14’er by the end of the year, and here I was, with some of my closest friends to help make that promise come true. Last March I applied for our permit, and we were given the date of 9/11 for our ascent. I couldn’t think of a better place to be on that specific day that holds so many intense memories, to be reflective and thankful for all that life has offered to me, and to remember those who have been less fortunate. Leslie and her twin sister Lisa, and Steph, my own twin (not by birth), began our hike up the Mt. Whitney Trail at 3:30am.
Surprisingly, we had a lot of energy in the middle of the night and made great time climbing several miles on a trail that was lit up only by the tiny light in our headlamps. As dawn crest the peaks that stood tall over Death Valley, ironically being the lowest point in the country only 70 miles away, the crimson glow slowly illuminated a valley that surrounded Lone Pine Lake, about 2.5 miles up the trail. This was a rare but exhilarating moment for me, to be miles away from civilization at daybreak, to be able to actually witness the day come alive in the forest, in front of my eyes. We kept up our consistent pace and continued on, past the valley, across another stream, and hiked through Outpost Camp, the first campground on the way up the trail. We were now moving into intense boulder fields, a terrain that felt foreign coming from the lushness of the Rocky Mountains where I had just spent the last week. This landscape was completely different—Whitney was harsh and unforgiving, a mountain made of solid granite and we were about to hike up miles and miles of a rock side trail, with over 99 switchbacks that seemed completely endless.
Half way up the infamous switchbacks, I started to notice the drop of several thousand feet that was growing only inches from our trail. Not one for heights, I focused on my hiking partner’s ankles, and just put one foot in front of the other. This was a true test of strength for my stomach, and with the increasing altitude, it was becoming a challenge to keep my head clear. If I thought too hard about it, I would have found myself on the verge of a panic attack and I’m sure I would have turned around by this point in the climb. But Steph’s encouragement and her steadfast mantra of “eye of the tiger,” helped me find a way to march on…. and on… and on… and on. The ascent was relentless. Then, all of a sudden, we made it to Trail Crest, which really felt like a “false summit,” but it was actually a link to another trail system on the backside of Whitney, a harrowing, narrow foot path with even more exposure and wind, that would eventually (about 3 miles away) get us to the top of the mountain. My eyes were zeroed in on the sky, making sure the cloud formations weren’t ominous and thunderous. They did appear dark, but the wind was in our favor, and there was no sign of rain or lightning. Quite tempting at this point, once again, to turn around, but we had come so far. I asked a few of the hikers descending at this point, what the skies were like at the top, and they said that they were fine and there were no storm predictions for today, but for tomorrow. I said a prayer.
Looking back, we were extremely lucky. It took us an exorbitantly long time to reach the summit—10.5 hours to hike 11 miles, getting us to the top at 2pm, which was very late considering we had 11 miles to hike back to the Portal. If it were the middle of the summer, we would have surely been caught in a thunderstorm, but I think that because it was the beginning of autumn, that weather patterns shifted and we, again, were very, very, lucky.
The Whitney Team was pretty exhilarated to be at the summit together, but we didn’t stick around too long because we knew we had a long way to go to get back to the bottom. With some renewed energy, we retraced our footsteps and booked it back to Trail Crest and down the switchbacks. It was at Trail Camp, the uppermost campground on the Whitney Trail, where things started to get fuzzy.
For some reason the landscape didn’t look as familiar as it did when we were going up the trail. I’m still not sure if we ended up taking a wrong turn, or if we were all just delirious and dehydrated from what was now probably about 15 hours of hiking. I kept asking my friends, “Are you sure we came this way,” and they would mumble, “I think so.” The fact is, there is really one trail up and one trail down. But it was starting to get dark, and it felt like we would be at the trail head soon, but the trail head seemed to never come!
We hiked as long as we could without turning the headlamps on, as they tend to make you nauseous by following a light that is moving around so much. Finally, Steph turned hers on and we followed from behind with one light and with her calling out, “rock,” or “root” or “cliff”! Doing this all in the dark was insane! I took the helm at one point, and being completely exhausted, started to make up songs to scare the bears away because I just had a very strong feeling we were going to come upon a very large animal—and we did not want to surprise a bear after all we had been through.
I was continuing to be very skeptical of being lost. Parts of the trail were familiar, but parts of the trail weren’t, and by my calculations, we should have been much further along by this point. We did come upon the meadow where daybreak broke, and ironically it was dusk at that point, so it was hard to see. We knew we were heading in the right direction, but for some reason it was taking forever to hike the 11-mile return. But we kept going. We would see vague, very far in the distance, car lights and would get excited that we were close to the Portal. Then, they would just disappear. It’s very possible we were hallucinating, because we were all out of water and had stopped eating because we just knew we needed to keep on moving. This went on for hours. Then we lost light in not only one headlamp, but two. There was seemingly no end in sight to this trail. We now started to see the lights of Lone Pine in the distance, and in my gut, I felt like we missed a turn off to the Portal and were on a trail to nowhere, or down to Lone Pine, which was another 11 miles. But we kept on going. The group started to get more vocal, whines of pains in the knees, grunting on every step, and sighing and there were probably a few tears here and there. We were all trying to keep it together, but we were all really ready to collapse, and I was now worried that we were going to lose all of our light very shortly. As the leader of the expedition at this point, I said we needed to think about making camp soon, which threw everyone into an internal mild state of panic. I was in “Survivor” mode, and mad at myself for not bringing an extra headlamp battery. Our phones were all dead. What were we going to do? We kept on hiking.
We finally came upon a sign on the trail that I remembered from the start, and rejoiced. I guessed the sign was about a mile in from the Portal, so we all breathed a sigh of relief, but still had a ways to go. This hike was the longest hike I have ever traveled, and I thought it would never end. We made it back to the trailhead at 10pm, after 18.5 hours on our feet. We were out of our minds, but grateful to be back in the car. I took my shoes off, chugged some water, and stared out into the pitch black wilderness in a mild state of shock. My legs were numb, but luckily not one blister. What an insane day, but what a tremendous accomplishment. It was mind over matter for the last several hours, and luckily I trekked this legendary mountain with the most amazing group of friends who helped each other hold it together and who were all, thankfully, in the best shape of our lives. Steph’s pedometer read, “30 miles,” which I find somewhat hard to believe, but who knows, maybe we did stray an extra 8 miles because it sure felt like it. Or maybe we entered the twilight zone for a few hours and between exhaustion, dehydration and altitude mind tricks, we only thought we were lost for 8 miles along the trail that just went forever. We’ll never really know, but we did it—we made it to the top and back of Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the lower 48—in one, long, epic day.
