Golden Pinnacle
Six months ago, I woke up every morning and waited to reserve an exit permit for Mt. Whitney, for a solid week the 25 permits per day would disappear between 7:00 and 7:02, before I could even click on an opening, it was gone. Finally after 6 days, I got a permit to Exit Mt. Whitney starting at the New Army Pass.
My wife last year heard all the fun the guys had of hiking Mt. Whitney and she really wanted to get in on it. She’s never backpacked before this year, we got all her gear took a weekend trip up to San Gorgonio in July, spent a week in Mammoth hiking and training by carrying our kids in the backpacks.
Finally the day came, we had scrutinized our gear, over and over again, what to bring, what not to bring, last minute add-ons how much food for 5 possibly 6 days. We rationed out our food, broke everything up in organized baggies for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 85% of it fit into one bear canister, but we had to get another one the day before the trip because it wasn’t possible to fit 6 days of food + toiletries into one canister.
Careful planning of our food:
We had arranged a shuttle to drop us off from Mt. Whitney Portal to Horseshoe meadows, really nice guy I found from an internet search that lead me to a guy who knew a guy… Long story short, he was a great guy and his Mother In Law who is native of Lone Pine worked with my grandmother who was also a Lone Pine Local years ago! Small world.
Setting off:
The weather the past few days in the Sierras had been wet to say the least. More than one local in Lone Pine told us to stay down the hill, but we were determined to see it for ourselves. I’m glad we did.
As we started the clouds were showing signs of ominous activity coming our way but we were prepared. As soon as it started to rain, we broke out our rain gear, and as soon as we got it on, the sun came out and baked us, so we’d stop and take it off. As soon as it was off, it would start to rain again…
Finally the weather stayed consistent and the skies opened up. Rain, Lightning, and THUNDER. It is such an experience to literally be in the thunder like that. We made it to our first campsite option, and decided that due to the 1 hour of sleep we all had the night before we would go no further (even though our goal was about a mile or so further.)
Even though this is probably the most popular place to camp on this trail, due to the weather, everyone was gone, we saw 3 other groups camping here but all were well away from us making it feel very intimate. We had met earlier a nice lady who was backpacking alone hoping to summit Mt. Langley the next day. She had come all the way from Norway. After setting up camp, she met up with us and asked if she could camp with us, she had gone up above the tree line in the lightning storm and literally had the fear of God put in her. That first night was wet, but we took shelter under the trees and sat around our camp stoves and talked well into the night.
The next day, we were slated to head over New Army Pass above 12,000 feet. The sky still looked ominous, and murky. Langley was blanketed with white from hail/snow.
Honna, our Norwegian friend offered to drive us to our car and recommended that we did not try the pass in the weather. The clouds were grey, but not thundery so we opted to go to the pass and assess the weather, if it looked as if conditions wouldn’t improve, we agreed we would turn around.
As we reached New Army, the sky started to briefly clear adding a pep to our step
By the time we arrived at the last lake before the trail to the pass, the sky was completely clear and the sun was in full force. We knew this was our opportunity so we set out and over. My wife’s first adventure into real “backcountry”
LOVED the Geology of New Army Pass!
At the top of the Pass we caught our first glimpse of our final destination some 5 days later and 40 miles away. Mt. Whitney.
As we cooked our Mac and Cheese we were graced with the presence of a few big horn sheep passing by as well.
Not to mention the 1000’s of marmots we would see in the next 4 days.
Heading down into the drainage the scenery exploded, and our human interactions plummeted. We were completely alone for more than 24 hours not a single person to be seen, that’s getting away!
We had no definite plan on where to camp, but lower lake to the creek was all fair game. We figured to make up some ground so that tomorrows long hike would be shorter. Upon coming to the Creek our pace grinded to a halt as we just HAD TO FISH.
Even got my wife to throw a fly:
She wouldn’t touch the fish though.
We moved down the creek until the sun was low in the sky. We got the brilliant idea to cross the stream to camp in a clearing away from the crowd (mind you we never saw another person…) I, being a good husband laid a log across two rocks and let my wife go first… yeah bad idea, she fell in, and in the extreme drought conditions zero fire’s made it for a cold night for her.
Thankfully the sun the next day had that convection power and by late morning most everything was dry except her hiking boots.
My brother and I got up EARLY as the sun rose to fish the stream we camped next to while my wife enjoyed my down sleeping bag for a few more hours. We ran into a few buck dear. One of them was at least a 4×4 if not a 5×5.
Making it to a backcountry ranger station my brother was ecstatic to find this:
A dream come true! Too bad I had already done my business, that would have been nice!
The snow levels in this area must be amazing in the winter, there was a survey marker in the trees.
A zoomed in shot of that same marker about 20ft up.
Notice the shovel hanging in the tree?
At the crossing the stream was calling us, we took our packs off and worked a small pool for about 30 min.
After a grueling hike up to the next pass, we were wiped out but still had a few more miles of descending to do before our next camp. After a few hours, we came into view again for the first time in 2 days of our destination.
We made our way to the lower of two major meadows. We were supposed to stay closer to the upper meadow but upon looking at the creek and the meadows residents we decided this was the perfect place to set up camp.
We set up in the tree line, and enjoyed the alpenglow view from our camp chairs (WORTH THEIR WEIGHT IN GOLD BY THE WAY) After dinner we took our sleeping pads out to the flats and laid out to watch the stars, SO MANY of them.
The trees kept us safe from the condensation and cold that night, we awoke to fish the meadow and our canisters had taken the brunt of the August night.
As the sun began to rise, we set up our fishing gear, washed our socks, ate our oatmeal and went fishing.
By late morning we had caught quite a few, and decided it was time to make our short trip for the day to our next site. Along the way, we fished, and fished.
Our 3.4 mile walk took us almost 7 hours from all the fishing stops.
We reached the upper meadow where were supposed to camp and were so glad we decided to stay lower, it was where the JMT and the PCT converge and all the backcountry Whitney Hikers like us camped it was a zoo. I had read of a toilet in the vicinity and after loosing out on the opportunity the previous day we went on a search. I had high expectations for this one…
When we stumbled upon it, it was less appealing than the one at the backcountry ranger station the day before.
(My shorts are pulled up, picture for effect)
After setting up guard so that we could use the toilet in “privacy” we pressed on. Only having covered 1 mile in a few hours…
We fished more.
As we reached the last lake with fish in it, we stopped to give it a try. The only time on the entire trip (save the last lake of the last day on the way out) where we had ZERO luck. We saw some huge fish in that lake, but we were tired, fatigued and hungry so we just couldn’t pull it together to fish proper.
Having become accustomed to having no humans around us, we pressed on past the last lake where everyone else stops so that we could find a bit of solitude, a few hundred feet above that lake we camped in the rocks next to some tarns.
Just in time for sunset. The alpenglow and sunset was amazing!
That night my wife had a hard time, she saw at 3:00 am all the hikers with their headlamps going up the side of the hill and began to over think the hike. She could not get back to sleep and spent the rest of the night and morning worrying about the heights we were about to face.
I have to give it to her, she was a trooper, she cried almost the whole way up, but as we kept telling her we didn’t have go over, or up to the summit, she just said, “NO, we’re doing this” and she pressed through her fear of heights one foot in front of the other.
And she made it! She is a trooper!
We headed down and out with the plans that we would try to get to the car that night.
By the time we reached the Trailside Meadow we were spent, this is arguably the worst section of trail, straight rock, every step is a potential ankle breaker and we were tired. We decided we’d stay at Outpost camp hoping for our ‘secret campsite’ to be open.
Away from the rest of the group tucked in the hill we set up camp. And played cards into the night. We had decided it was safer to get up early and eat that BIG PANCAKE breakfast at the portal than try to push out and go home and fall asleep on the road.
We weighed our packs, now empty of water and with (4lbs of food left over – YIKES over packed) My base weight still came in at 33lbs. Subtract the 2lbs of food I was carrying and the 2 lbs. bear canister and my scrutinizing really paid off!
The famous Pancake breakfast!
We didn’t finish it, but waited 15 minutes and then ordered a hamburger also! After 6 days of freeze dried food, it was SOOO good.
It was crazy to think that just a few hours prior we stood on top of this after hiking 42 miles to it.
It was really a great trip.
At the end of it all my wife tells me, “I loved the whole part, except Mt. Whitney. DON’T EVER TAKE ME ON THAT MOUNTAIN AGAIN.” She’s already planning next years trip… that doesn’t involve any 2,000ft cliffs.
