On Wednesday we drove from sea level to Mt Dana. That short hike from 10K ft to 13K ft in 3 miles was the most tiring hike I have ever done, including plenty of 20+ mile hikes. That night we camped at 7400 ft - all the higher elevation campgrounds nearby were either still closed because of snow or full.
On Thursday we camped at 10K feet and did a 10 mile flat hike to Cottonwood Lake.
On Friday we camped at 10K feet and did a 7 mile hike up to 11.6 K ft at Trail Peak.
On Saturday we camped at Whitney portal (7.8K feet) and did a short 5 mile hike to Lone Pine lake. We scouted out both the new and the old trail and marked waypoints in the GPS for use the next morning.
On Sunday we woke up at 4 am, started climbing at 4:49 am, and I got to the summit at 11:25 am. There was a little bit of snow along a few sections of the route, which slowed down the hiking some, but not much. The snow was well packed by footprints, so we never sank in or got our hiking boots wet.
We got back at 7pm, including waiting for the slowest person in our group to catch up.
So it was about 6.5 hours up, 5.5 hours down, and 2 hours of enjoying the summit and/or waiting for the 3rd person in the group. The wait was pleasant enough since the weather was perfect and the scenery amazing.
Interestingly, the only difference in acclimatization between the first two of us and the guy who kept our pace until Trail Camp (12K feet) and then fell almost 2 hours behind was that the slowest guy missed day 1 of our trip - the Mt Dana hike. That was the only warmup hike we did above 12K feet.
The 4 days of acclimatization made the entire hike not only manageable, but thoroughly enjoyable.
Last edited by Kendra; 07/19/11 12:48 PM.
