June 24th - Crabtree Meadow to Tyndall Creek

Woke up early to chilly temps. We had heard rumors that there were afternoon thunderstorms predicted. We hoped to climb Mt. Whitney (the highest mountain in the continguous 48 states) and get back down before the weather turned bad. The plan was to leave our tent up and only carry a daypack up Mt. Whitney.

We felt light as feathers cruising up the trail from Crabtree Meadows with our daypacks - so much better than lugging a full pack. With the cold temps, our first obstacle came at crossing the creek by camp. There was a log jam a the creek crossing which would have been a normally easy crossing. However, with the cold temps, the logs were all iced over. Being cold, the last thing we wanted to do was have to get our feet wet. I came up with the brilliant idea of putting on our microspikes to cross the logs. The extra traction worked like a charm and we made it across the logs without problems.

The trail from the meadows to Whitney starts out gradual until it hits Guitar Lake - a cool alpine lake in the shape of a guitar in a bowl formed by Whitney and Mt. Hitchcock. As we hit Guitar Lake, our jaws dropped. We had already thought we were walking in primo scenery, but Guitar Lake and the high alpine surroundings bumped it up another notch. We tried to take pictures, but I don't think pictures can do it justice.

From Guitar Lake, the trail starts steeply switchbacking up. A lot of the trail was iced over which made movement slow. We hit a couple of sketchy patches of hardened snow in couloirs which caused us to don our microspikes. Once again, the microspikes made things easy and we made it through the snow without much difficulty. The further we climbed up, the more snow we hit. It was slow moving, but we made it to the top of Mt. Whitney about 10am. We were the 3rd and 4th people of the day to arrive - only beat by thru-hiker friends Leprachaun and Robby. We lucked out with perfectly clear, blue skies which allowed us to see far away in all directions. The views were again, out of this world. I was so glad Tom had talked me into climbing Mt. Whitney!

Although sunny, it was chilly and breezy atop the mountain, so we only spent probably 30 minute up top and then started heading down. On the way down, we passed tons of people coming up. Mt. Whitney is a popular climb - most people coming in from the opposite side at the Whitney Portal. Most people were struggling to make it up the mountain. Up until that time, Tom and I had taken our thru-hiking shape for granted. But seeing everyone else struggle and us just feeling like we were on a little dayhike finally made us realize - all this thru-hiking is really paying off. Guess we're in shape now. :)

Made the 15 mile roundtrip up and down Whitney and still felt good. We decided to pack up and move on down the trail another 10 miles in hopes of getting closer to Forester Pass. Although feeling a lot slower with our heavy packs, we still made good time - making it to Tyndall Creek camp by evening. We met up with all our friends that we had met the previous night at Crabtree Meadows.