Mount Whitney, Mountaineers Route

After climbing Shasta I had longed to go back to the mountains but somehow didn't manage to plan for almost a year. Finally I looked around and Mount Whitney sounded like the obvious candidate after ascending Mount Shasta. It is the highest peak in the lower 48 states. Only peaks in Alaska are higher than mount Whitney. Even though it is the highest there is a relatively non technical hiking path to the top via the whitney trail. It is an arduous 19 miles of switch backs.

Instead of going up the hiking route I chose the mountaineers route for this trip to further improve my snow and cramponing skills. It was initially supposed to be 4 of us, Sanket, Kunal, Arpit and me. Arpit had to back out as he injured his knee a month before the trip.

This was a leisurely 4 day trip with a full on snow approach. Before the trip itself I had told Scott our guide that the objective was to improve our skills not necessarily reach the summit. The snow was soft and needless to say in plenty as it was late February. The first day we did most of our mileage. Some scrambling and snow hiking to reach our first camp site which had running water. For the second day we did a short steep section to our advance camp. In hindsight we could have easily attempted the summit from this camp but reducing the mileage for the summit day was quite appreciable.

Day 3 was our main summit day for which we left from upper boy scout after a late alpine start around 4am. We kept up pace and reach summit within 5-6 hours. It was a quick trip and we were back in our camp by noon. This was quite different compared to my previous trip.

Summit day

Me and Scott on the summit of Mount Whitney

I think this automatic video of the trip explains a lot about this trip.