Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Planning for a July 9 day hike

Thinking about logistics and acclimation for a July 9 day hike permit with a group of 4.

Current plan is to spend the nights of the 4th/5th/6th at 7500ft near Bridgeport, doing some hikes up around 10k-13k feet in Yosemite (off of Tioga Pass) during the day. Then we'll drive south to Horseshoe Meadows to camp the night of the 7th, and try to stake out a tent site or two at the walk-in Whitney trailhead campground on Monday the 8th to get to sleep early so we can get started 1:30-2am. It'll be the first ascent for all of us.

Some open questions:

• As I understand it, both Horseshoe Meadows and the trailhead campground (but not the portal campground) are walk-in, first come first served, though the Whitney trailhead only permits a single night. Am I right in thinking that arriving early in the day should give us a very good chance of securing a spot to camp, and that we shouldn't need additional wilderness permits beyond the Whitney permit to stay there?
• Given the risk of thunderstorms after noon on the summit and variable hiking speeds in our party, my best guess is that budgeting 9-10 hours to go up and leaving around 2am is about right - we averaged around 1.5mph when 3 of the 4 of us did some hikes around 12k feet in Colorado last month. But I'm curious if anyone thinks this is a poor choice of timing.
• Water usage: I tend to drink a lot on hikes, so I'm planning to fill up with 4 or 5 liters departing Trail Camp or the switchback 23 spring. Some other party members seem to get by on a lot less, but I'm still encouraging them to have at least 2 liters when they head out from Trail Camp.
• Hiking/acclimation schedule ahead of time: I want to get everyone used to 12k+ elevation before the hike to reduce altitude sickness, but I also don't want to exhaust us all by going on an intense trek the day beforehand. Am I right in thinking that a Mount Dana summit (5.2mi, 3k vertical gain, summit of 13k feet) on the 6th or 7th, and then relatively light exercise until the big hike, is about the right schedule?
• Food: How tough is it to imbibe calories at elevation, and should we load up on food while we still have appetite further down the slope? I'm expecting to take some snacks with me but still end up at a substantial calorie deficit by the end of the day.
• Weather: Forecast looks pretty brutally hot, at least at low elevation. I'm expecting the ascent to be a fairly comfortable 50-70 degrees the whole way up, and the descent to start getting unpleasant below 12k feet once we're well into the afternoon.
• Anything else important we might be missing in our plans?

Sorry I didn't reply before you hiked. Please tell us how you did.

Your planning sounds good. Bridgeport is a beautiful place to visit. Heading over Sonora pass gets you over without worrying about Yosemite entry permits. Mt Dana is a great preparation hike!

Horseshoe and Whitney Portal walk-in camp sites are both one-night only. You should be able to get a spot any day, no permit required.

Timing: looks good. Whitney is twice the climb of Mt Dana, so doing Dana first should give you an idea of the time you will need.

Water: 4-5 liters from Trail Camp sounds pretty heavy! Also, hide one at Trail Crest, and pick it up on the way back. No need to carry it all the way up to the summit, and half way back.

Acclimation: Looks good. 2 days rest after Dana would be best.

I am curious how your hike went!

The trip went pretty well! We did almost exactly the itinerary outlined. On Saturday we did the Dana Canyon trail up into the talus fields to dip our does in Dana Lake, which was also a great hike. Sunday was Mount Dana itself, which we were about 5h going up, and was our last substantial pre-Whitney hike. After setting up camp on Monday at the portal, we started off at 12:40am, making decent time at the start but slowing down substantially after Trail Camp around 7am.

One of our party members turned back at the 23rd switchback spring around 8:30AM after experiencing some altitude sickness symptoms; the other three of us went on, with one party member splitting off to summit around 10am and me and a friend plodding at a much slower pace to summit right around noon. (In our defense, we were hampered by the 5 pounds of inflatable couch we were hauling up to deploy at the top.)

We spent around an hour and a half at the peak because we were lucky enough to have clear skies for the whole early afternoon, then headed back the way we'd came at a pretty leisurely pace with a very brief nap at Trail Camp. We picked up speed after Lone Pine Lake when we realized how far we had left to go, but still only got back at 8PM. Ignoring time at the peak, we were about 11h up and 6.5h down.

Datapoints for other readers / things I didn't know before the trip:

• There's a store 50 meters from the trailhead that serves hot food until 7:15 PM - you don't have to plan around camp stove usage if you don't want to. It also has an okay stock of some common hiking supplies if you've forgotten a critical item.
• We arrived at the trailhead at noon the day before and had to look a bit for parking but found a campsite very easily.
• The wag bags are dispensed from a serve-yourself box at the trailhead, so you can still get one if you leave at a strange hour of the day.
• Wag bag use isn't guaranteed, and especially if you take an anti-laxative like loperamide beforehand you might be able to spare yourself the use of one. I think one of the four of us ended up using them?
• I had pretty unpleasant chafing around my rear end starting at about 5AM, which I really regretted not preparing for. The pain slowed me down a little but didn't stop me from suffering through the next 12 hours.
• If you set out well before dawn, look up sometime on the ascent! The stargazing is pretty excellent, especially once you've gotten away from the trailhead.
• I wish I'd been stricter about pushing my sleep schedule back - I was hiking on maybe 3 or 4 hours of sleep (7pm-11:40pm), and some members of the party were going on less, which is bad for your physical fitness, your happiness, and your safety. Given our slow pace I don't regret starting early though; it would have been a huge bummer to miss the summit from afternoon thunderstorms.
• Snow was pretty minimal, just a couple patches on the side of the trail during the switchbacks and maybe 30 feet of walking over a well-trodden snowpatch during the last mile.
• I was hiking at a pretty typical pace for me up until the switchbacks, and then I slowed down substantially, plodding along very slowly above 13k feet. This didn't affect me at 13.7k in Colorado last month, so my guess is that it's a mix of slightly worse acclimation, sleep deprivation, and general exhaustion from having already climbed 5k vertical that day.
• Water consumption varied a LOT. I probably drank 1.5 - 2 gallons on the way up, while our fastest party member only drank half a liter on the entire ascent (including 2h at the summit waiting for us). Wish I'd thought of Steve's tip to stash a bottle at Trail Crest!
• The party member who turned back from worrying altitude symptoms (painful chest tightness when inhaling and mild to moderate headache) was the only one of us who took Diamox, so it's certainly not a panacea. (I do expect that it helps, though.)

Thanks for the report, Drake.

If you see this... regarding the chafing... Proper underwear will help if it is actual chafing. I use synthetic boxers after experiencing a serious problem where I had to beg for a roll of stretch bandaging to wrap around my thigh. But the other issue is that, when hiking, some people experience a tiny amount of "leakage", and that crap can create a raw burning that just gets worse and worse as you push on. If or when that occurs, it is best to take a break, use wet TP or wet wipes, and really clean up the area. That has always worked for me.

For actual chafing in your nether regions, Gold Bond has a Friction Defense Stick that I started using after real bad chafing on the PCT in 2022. Been a great help on every long hike I've done since.