Last weekend, Lauren and I climbed Mt. Whitney’s famous mountaineer’s route. The forecast called for high winds on Saturday, lessening on Sunday.
The climb begins at the Whitney portal, which sits at 8,000 ft. We got started at 8:30am to warm weather and mild winds. Our packs were light (26 pounds) compared to other climbers on the route who regularly travel with 45 – 65 backbreaking pounds.
By noon, we had hiked & climbed up to Lower Boyscout Lake at 10,000 ft and then up to Upper Boyscout Lake by around 2pm. where we refilled our water. Following that the climbing got considerably steeper as we continued up to our base camp, Iceberg lake.
Ascending into the rock-strewn valley below Iceberg lake, the wind picked up considerably, occasionally knocking us off balance. We had brought no ropes for the near vertical final 400 ft of climbing just below the summit, and knew we’d be unable to finish in these conditions.
Pressing on, we reached Iceberg lake by 4 PM to find the base camp full of wind-weary climbers, bunkered down behind the few large boulders.
At 13,000 ft, Iceberg lake is a breathtaking body of water which sits in a small bowl directly below the massive east face of Mt. Whitney. Surrounding the lake is a rock field strewn with boulders large and small. No trees or green here.
There are several rock-walls which have been built up over time for climbers to protect their tents from the wind. To our dismay, all the good sites were taken, and we were left to the dregs — a very exposed site just off the lake. Making the best of the situation, we spent about half an hour building up the existing rock-wall, a futile attempt to protect and shield us for the night.
Speaking with some of the other climbers, I found one party had been stuck up there for the last 24 hours, unable to climb due to the wind. They were tired and said if they had to endure another night of it, they were determined to pack it in and hike out.
As the sun went down, the wind picked up battering our tent severely. It was hard to sleep with all the noise, and unfortunately within less than an hour, I had to get up to go pee. The wind chill factor made it very cold indeed (considerably below freezing I think). Returning quickly to my bag, I unfortunately developed a mild hypothermia. Between the lack of sleep, the 7 hours of hiking and not enough food, my body was unable to maintain its core temperature. While I’m no stranger to this condition, Lauren was kind of freaked out. I was too tired to do anything about it immediately, so I laid there and shivered. After an hour I finally roused myself enough to boil up a liter of water, and put this into my sleeping bag to re-warm my body. This did the trick, turning my sleeping bag into a toasty safe haven ending my shivers. Also luckily, some time after this the wind died down, allowing us to doze off and get a few hours sleep.
The next morning, at 7:30 AM, we awoke to a bluebird day. No wind, and crystal clear blue skies. Packing up a small summit pack, including food, water and extra layers, we got our start, climbing up the final 1,000 feet to the notch. This took us a good 2 hours, and was quite taxing given the altitude. At the top of the notch, we cached most of our gear and continued to the “final 400â€.
This is a steep and exposed couloir coming down from the summit on the north side. It is covered in a permanent ice-field year round, but in summer, enough of the ice melts away to provide a safe passage. The alternative was to traverse around to the back side of the mountain and walk up. Given that Lauren is an experienced and good rock climber, we both felt confident that this last hurdle would fall easily to our attack, and it did. Climbing to the left of the couloir, we avoided the ice and found an easy route up.
Near the top, we got below a dead vertical headwall which looked absolutely impassable from below. We traversed right across a small ledge with crappy handholds to get back to the right side. The exposure was a bit scary, and I began to wonder if I should have told Lauren the story about the climber who died here last summer when he lost his grip and fell. She pulled it together and gingerly stepped across the 4 inch ledge to a great sigh of relief. Twenty more feet of easy scrambling and we finally emerged onto the summit plateau.
Gone was the wind, and all that was left was a crystal clear, beautiful day on the summit of the highest mountain in the lower-48 states: 14,498 feet.