We used SWS Mountain Guides for our guided trip and our main guide Tim and his apprentice, Alex, did not disappoint. They were both experienced climbers and Tim never made a wrong turn on the mostly trail less route and he probably could have done it blind folded!
What is the Mountaineers' Route. It is a shorter distance climb (12 miles roundtrip from Whitney Portal) as opposed to the trail hike, which is 22 miles roundtrip. Here are few images from https://www.timberlinetrails.com to get a sense of it.
Well, here goes the report. He hit up the Pizza Factory in Lone Pine for carbo loading the night before and this may been a mistake(not due to the service or food, which were both great), but more to come about this later. We started at 7 am at the SWS office in Lone Pine for the information session and gear check. We were informed that due to the late snow melt this year, we would need to bring an ice axe and crampons for one section of the route that still had snow on it. Dang it, more weight in the pack! Oh well, it is the Mountaineers' Route.
View of Mt. Whitney from Lone Pine early in the morning.
We drove up to Whitney Portal and hit the trail with the guides to basecamp at Upper Boy Scout Lake. There was actually a real trail for a while but it soon turned to a very unmaintained/trail less journey but not overly dangerous or strenuous.
Crossed a couple of easy creeks crossings and made it past the "Ebersbacher Ledges" and made it to basecamp by late afternoon.
Lower Boy Scout Lake
We set up camp at Upper Boy Scout Lake, enjoyed the views before an early dinner and hit the hay at 8 pm.
We woke up at 315 am. Had some coffee and oatmeal and started the climb at 430 am. We made it to Iceberg Lake by 630 am. It was pretty cool hiking in the dark, with great views in all directions as the sun started to rise. This was section #1 of the summit climb.
Before we left Iceberg Lake, we put on our rope harnesses and started climbing up "the gully". This was Section #2. The gully leads up to "the notch". The gully is a 1400 ft ascent on loose rock and snow. It is slow going. We roped together for the snow section but didn't use crampons. We used our ice axes for stability, but we were able to kick step into the soft snow with only our boots. Here are some pics from the gully section.
I was able to see some "sky pilots" for the first time near the top of the gully. Sky Pilots are the purple flowered plants that grow above 13k ft.
We made it to the notch by 10 am, without knowing what lied ahead.
The next section, section #3, was "The Wall". The Wall was a very vertical 400 ft section of rock that required ropes. Our guide Tim reassured us that all would be fine, so we roped together again and started climbing up the wall. I went first, Solo went second and Grizzly went last. Since I had never been on a Class 3 or 4 climb before, it took about 30 minutes to get over the fear, but with the reassurance from our guides, I was able to get comfortable and climb. I still did not take my hands off of the rock for more than a moment to ensure I would be safe.
We reached the summit at 11 am. It was a very good feeling to reach the summit and to get off of the wall. It was very cool to just pop up onto the summit from basically coming up from the side of the mountain!
We let out few calls of relief and celebration and then checked out the Hut, views and signed the register, but couldn't stay long because we had another 6 hours of climbing to get back down.
And again, the little man kept reminding that I would have to get back down the wall and I must say I contemplated going back down via the regular trail instead of going back down the way we came up. However, we received a good pep talk from guide Tim and then we all started back down the wall (Grizzly first, then me and then Solo). I was a bit nervous again at first, but again after a short while I felt pretty confident and we made it to the notch at 1:30 pm in one piece. But now, the "how are we going to get back down" bucket was about to overflow. The next section would be tough.
To get back down the gully's snow section, would require crampons. We put them on, roped together and started going. This was a tough section. We had to go down sideways, which wasn't easy due to the severe decline. This made keeping balance an issue. The other issue was that you had to keep bent over to keep the ice axe in for stability. This worked out the rest of the muscles that hadn't been touched yet during the hike. Together as a group we managed to get through the snow but it took a while.
We actually bumped into Yukon Cornelius at the gully.
Now we still had to tackle the rest of gully and by now we were all getting very mentally and physically fatigued. We toughed it out and made it to Iceberg Lake at 4:15 pm for a rest before starting off again to the last section to basecamp.
We all put it on autopilot and we made it to camp by 6 pm. Solo collapsed into his tent, while myself and Grizzly made our way to the creek to chill the Blue Moons for our celebration beers!
Solo emerged after about 1.5 hours and seemed ok. We all eat sparingly and discussed the day's accomplishments over dinner.
Guide Alex read us a John Muir Mt. Shasta short story and then sleep time came around 830 pm. I managed to get up at about 1030 pm and again at 2 am to take some night shots. I wasn't really sleeping anyway due the nerves and over exhaustion!
The next morning was low key. Got up around 630 am when the sun came up, had breakfast, packed up and started the trek back to the car.
We made it in about 4 hours to Whitney Portal. Again, it was slow going on the mostly steep, unmaintained trails. This means you can really never look up, like on normal maintained trails. Here, one false step and you will fall down.
We met the guides back at their office in town and then headed off to the Smokehouse for brisket and beer! Well deserved.
Now for a short discussion about (HAFE) High-altitude flatus expulsion. I really haven't found it discussed much on this forum but I like to tell it like it is and to give all of the details. We all suffered from it starting during the middle of the first night at basecamp until we got back to base camp. We didn't really know what was going on until we remembered past discussions about (HAFE) and then we realized what we were experiencing. So what is it? We did some research during the long drive home and found that it affects hikers at high altitude and studies have been done. It starts 8 hours after hiking up to between 8k and 11k feet and it continues to worsen has you hike even higher. It is the overly inflated bag of potato chips affect. But for us, our stomachs were the bag of chips! And since we hiked up to 11k and then stayed there or above for about 36 hours, we got to experience HAFE the entire time. What can you do about it? Not much. We did make a serious error by carbo loading however. The carbs make even more gas! Maybe next time just steak and veggies before the hike. Definition from Wikipedia: "The phenomenon is based on the differential in atmospheric pressure, directly correlated with the observer's frequency of and level of experience in high-altitude metabolism. As the external pressure decreases, the difference in pressure between the gas within the body and the atmosphere outside is higher, and the urge to expel gas to relieve the pressure is greater. Consistent with Boyle's law, controlling for dietary variance, the amount of gas produced is constant in mass, but the volume increases as the external pressure decreases. The feeling of fullness or need to expel brought on by this differential in atmospheric pressure has been verified by studies involving military pilots subjected to pressure changes simulating flight."
