Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Will it be door number 1, door number 2 or.....

I started my Mt Whitney Diary over on the WPS site. It can be found here:
Whitney Diary 2010

And as the song goes..."All my bags are packed I'm ready to go I'm standin' here outside the door and I'm leavin....."

Ok...not quite yet. I'm heading up to Horseshoe Meadow in the morning. I've called the Wilderness Permit center every day and haven't had any luck with cancellations. And I hate not having a backup plan. And I had to schedule a meeting on Thursday evening, so I won't be able to stick around to see if I can get a permit on the 8th.

Plan A - Get overnight permit for Whitney on Sept 7. Head to Consultation lake. Spend the night. Wake up and head for the summit. Back down Wednesday late afternoon.

Plan B - If I can't get an overnight permit for Sept 7, then plan is to camp at Meysan Lake on Sept 7th and then to summit Mt Irvine and Mt Mallory. Then I'll plan to do a day hike to Whitney in 3 or 4 weeks.

I'll probably log on tomorrow morning as well as Monday when I come down to Lone Pine.

You will be thoroughly acclimated by the 7th!

If you can't get a reservation by phoning in, since the 7th is next Tuesday, there will quite likely be plenty of no-shows available at 11 AM on the 6th at the Visitor Center in Lone Pine.

Hey Steve,
yup, my one bout of altitude sickness convinced me that I don't want to experience it again. I took my first 1/2 diamox a bit ago...no more sodas for me now.

My hope was to get my permit the day before so that I could leave early and explore more. But I did see the number of permits that were not used the day after labor day last year. I know the odds are very good that I'll get a permit no later than 11am on the 7th. But having the backup plan allows me to relax a bit.

Assuming a successful whitney summit, I may try to take a couple of days off later this month to do Meysan/Mallory/Irvine.
Tom

Knock it out of the park Tom!

in LP now. Lots of cancellations on the 7th. I have my permit reservation and heading to HM. Talk to you all soon

Rock on. Go get it!!!

I took Diamox for the first time on my last trip up to Red Lake. I've yet to have altitude sickness ie. headache, nausea but I've had some terrifying bouts of Cheyne-Stokes which I had no desire to repeat. The Diamox helped alot, however I had a couple of beers after my trip and it didn't change the taste at all, just made it taste slightly flat.

two nights at horseshoe meadow....I need a shower. Did a warmup hike to Cottonwood Pass yesterday. No problems at all. Nice leisurely 3.8mi up and even nicer 3.8mi back.

Hung out with some cool people in the campground.

Broke camp this morning and already got my permit.

Planning on a restful day and a nice hot shower.

Planning on hitting the trailhead at 8am tomorrow morning.

I am now officially part of the Whitney summit club.

More details with a complete trip report late. I need a shower!

Congratulations Tom! Looking forward to the TR.

I've got a serious jones to get in another summit attempt before the year ends. Which means that I need to do it before the snow really sets in.

There's no way I can do it during the week and I coach a fall baseball team right up until Thanksgiving.....

I may have to let my assistant coaches cover for me in the next couple of weekends.

Hoping that my 3 season tent covers "3 Whitney Seasons".

Why not try one of the other easily accessible peaks such as Thor or Wotan's Throne? Thor is an especially enjoyable peak (no debris, either)

Hi Bee,
Actually, it isn't so much Whitney as "whitney area". I could see even going for Irvine and Mallory via Meysan Lake. I just find myself clicking on the WZ and WPS websites to look at the webcams throughout the day. And just need to get my fix of the eastern sierras.

I can certainly understand the desire to go back soon. The nice thing about Thor is that it is a pretty straight-forward route from the WMT or MR (I did it last year during the group hikes with a light dusting of snow) I have had the Meysan Lakes Trail on my list, too. So much to choose from. I love the company of very experienced others, so I will wait and see what comes up in the future -- maybe another sleepover on a nifty peak.

Funny, I feel that way pretty much daily, but I have this unfortunate problem of a 2,500-mile gap between me and them.

CaT

Roger THAT!

CaT and Gary,
I hear ya...It's funny how I am now looking at ways that I can make my job work out such that I have plenty of vacation time next summer for at least 3 good trips.

My wife just rolls her eyes at my obsession. She doesn't get it yet.
tom

Key word - "yet". One trip with you should do it. Worked for me.

Decisions, Decisions....it looks like the boy has a day off from school on Monday. So the first thing that pops into my noggin is...."let's get a hike in!"

But it's got to be a quickie. JXN (short for Jackson) has little league (fallball) on Sunday and I happen to manage the team, so we can't bug out on that.

My first thought was to do a short hike to LPL. If it isn't frozen yet, we would love to do some fishing. But...we have both been there.

My second thought was to do a hike to LBSL (are there fish in LBSL?). Not sure if the boy is up to that. Now that we have Steve's mondo cool MR videos I think I can find the path.

But then I thought...hmmmm, Jxn showed some interest in signing the register at the top of Whitney. Obviously that isn't going to happen this trip, but what about another peak? So my question is, are there any relatively easy hikes in the LP area that would give jxn the chance to sign a peak register? Anything in the Cottonwood/Horseshoe meadow area?

When I talk about easy, I'm talking about an 11 year old that is only mildly enthusiastic about backpacking, so I don't want to scare him away from it. Something no more than 3 hours up and 1.5 hours down.

If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

(btw: we would drive up Sunday afternoon and camp at HM or at the Portal...or wherever....)

Tom, Trail Peak immediately comes to mind!

I didn't find a register at the top, but you could take one along and be the first to sign in! (There might already be one up there -- I didn't look at all.)

And don't get lost trying to rescue any human-sounding cows.