A buddy told me recently he was going with some friends who had a permit, but there was not room on the permit for anyone else. That got me thinking, I had wanted to try Whitney again this year ( 2 years ago I only made it to Trail Camp because of the level of snow in October), so I decided to give it a try and go for the walk in permit.
Not entirely sure how the walk in permit was going to work I drove up Wednesday night after my last client for the day, arriving around 11pm. I drove up Horsemeadows Road and parked my Xterra on one of the dirt roads around the Alabama hills falling asleep under the stars in the back of my truck.
The next day as sunrise woke me up I drove into town, got some breakfast at the only place open at 6am McDonalds, and then eventually made my way over to the Visitors Center. By then after looking more and more online it was becoming clearer to me that I really didn't need to be there until 11 am for a next day permit, but I thought I would check it out anyways in order to learn more, what they hell I'm already here anyways.
8am. The Permit lottery - not to get a permit, just to determine your place in line when you go inside and see if they have any extra permits for that day, it doesn't really matter how early you get there, everyone has an equal chance around 8am of being the first person in line.
Took advantage of the time and went to check out the arch.
11am.The Permit Lottery - again doesn't guarantee you a permit just a place in line to see if they have permits for the next day ( looking for an overnight permit starting the next day). No go ! So I got a permit for Cottonwood Lakes because I wasn't going to drive all the way up here for nothing, I would just go hiking up there by myself ;( sigh...
I headed up to Horsemeadows campground after this in order to find a place to camp for the night, my buddy and his friends coming up from San Diego Would meet me there later on in the day. When I got there the weather was gnarly, thunderstorms dumping several inches of slush onto the ground, and I thought this would suck for our first night camping up there so I took a little hike in the slush and then drove back to the front of the mountain to call him and see if he still wanted to camp there ? While I was calling him I decided to check the Recreation.gov site on my Iphone (I had just got so used to checking it all the time to see what if anything had opened up), sure enough I saw two W's in the Thursday (that particular day), and Friday columns. I had literally just come from the visitors center 1/2 hour to an hour earlier to no avail, but I decided to give them a call just in case before I headed all the way back down there. I called and the person I talked to said " they didn't understand why I was seeing a W in those columns as that is only for trails without quotas". I said ok and continued down the hill to look for a new camp site ( meanwhile the more I thought about this the more I thought it was bullshit, and decided to go back and check myself), I drove back to the Visitors Center and sure enough there were 4 extra permits now open, yeah!!! The new guy behind the counter couldn't ring up that permit fast enough for me, I keep glancing around sure that someone else was going to snag all 4 of them before I could even get just one, but I prevailed and the adventure begins.
Sorry for the long story, but I want people to not give up hope when they get a NO -GO in the lottery.
I took my permit and found a great camping spot up at the Lone Pine Campgrounds looking straight up at Mt Whitney, by the time my buddy arrived the weather had completely cleared up.
Friday Morning we drove up to the portal ( after my friends picked up their permit at the Visitor's Center, I've been to this place way to often so far) and started the hike around 9 with 46 lbs on my back : ) The weather was fantastic and we had a great time heading up to Trail Camp.
Waterfall we stopped at for a break.
Waterfall at the back of Outpost Camp.
By the time we arrived at trail camp the weather had turned and we had been hiking for an hour in the wet, cold slushy rain. We quickly set up camp and I retired for the night in my tent changing into dry cloths and cooking my dinner with my treasured Jet-boil. By 7 or 8 the weather had cleared up but It was taking me a while to get my body heat back up and refused to come out of my cocoon of a sleeping back until I had to in the morning. Let me tell you, a empty Gatorade bottle comes in really handy when its cold outside ( peeing inside a bottle rather then getting up and going outside).When the alarm went off at 3am, we all huddled outside as we warmed up our water for coffee and oatmeal as we took in the awesome view of stars and clear weather around the mountains.
We made it up to the cables on the "99 switchbacks" before we needed to stop and put on our microspikes because of the ice. But we keep them on most of the way to the top.
When we finally made it up to the "Trail Crest" the view was fantastic, clear for as far as you could see.
As we made our way across the backside I could really start to feel the altitude. By the time was made it to the top I was having to stop every 20 to 30 feet and let me heart rate come back down to a normal pace so it didn't feel like my heart was going to explode out of my ears.
By the time I finally made it to the top, clouds were starting to make their way back into the area and creeping up over the top.
I made it back down to my tent at "Trail Camp", rested in my tent for a little bit, ate some food and then packed up to head back down for the portal. By the time I started heading back for the portal, a light rain / hail had started again. You really need to be prepared for the different weather patterns when you come here.
I finally made back to my car by 8:30 pm, drove back into Lone Pine and had a burger and a beer at the Totem Café while listening to live music from across the street.
I'm looking forward to trying this again, hopefully wining a lottery spot before hand.
http://www.ihikesandiego.com/mt-whitney-hike/ 
