Sounds like I finished my almost-week of hiking in the Whitney area this past week just in the nick of time. I had planned a summit attempt for Thursday, 7/28 (to begin at midnight, since it was so hot during the day -- I usually hike in the area in late August/early September, not July); but intense smoke, just a few hours before my midnight start time the evening before (from the Lion's fire to the south of Whitney) ended up intervening, and I bowed out of my summit attempt in the interest of not inhaling copious amounts of smoke while also sucking air (still acclimating from Ohio).

CaT

If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracle of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.
- Lyndon Johnson, on signing the Wilderness Act into law (1964)