Whitney Proposal

While not exactly out of the country, I still wanted to write an update. On Friday morning, I received an email from a friend of mine, Rich. Rich is the guy who introduced me to Yosemite Valley. He took Marc and I up that way a couple years ago. Some pictures of the trip here. He toured us around the valley. He hiked us up the Misty Trail to Vernal Falls. Drove us to Glacier Point. Hiked us up to the Giant Sequoia groves. He also taught us about the trees there. So much tree knowledge. He is the Lorax...he speaks for the trees. I now take a hiking trip with Rich and a number of other guys (Marc, Trent, Rich, Jeff, Skip and myself) each year. We have a great time hiking around the outdoors. Last year we hiked in the Bear Creek area near Mono Hot Springs.

Sorry for the minor digression...At any rate, Rich had a very last minute proposal for Trent and I in the aforementioned email. Rich has a friend who had a permit for six to summit Mount Whitney. However, they only had four people to go. So, the offer was extended to Trent and myself. We both jumped at the chance. Hot diggity dog! (Who talks like that anymore...)

That was Friday. We leave for the Whitney on Tuesday night. We make our summit attempt on Thursday night. This leaves us very little acclimatization time, IMO. Very little indeed. However, I'm not going to back out because of a little less prep time. I am however, a little apprehensive about the trip as I've never actually been up that high before. Highest I've been was 10,834 feet (San Jacinto Peak in Riverside). I didn't have any altitude issues there. But, that was still about four thousand feet below Whitney's summit.

That and the fact that I've not been as active as I would have liked to have been for this attempt. I have always planned on doing this mountain. I just figured it would be a couple more years before I would get to it. So, a couple years sooner...such is life. Not like I'm in poor shape. Just not in the shape I'd like to be in.

With the altitude, I can take consolation in the fact that we will be sleeping at 10,000 feet both before and after the summit. The plan is to camp ourselves at Outpost Camp as a base camp. We'll take off at 4am for the summit on Thursday and then back down that evening. We'll pack out the next morning.

Very excited. Tuesday can't get here fast enough. I'm already all packed up and ready to go...on Sunday.