The High Sierras - Mt. Whitney

East Face

(6th in a series of posts about my 2012 trip to the High Sierra)

We started early.  The peaks come into view.

The morning sun was pretty.

Scrambling to the start of the route. 

Neale follows the first pitch.

Junk climbing.  Get used to it.

Neale starts the Airy Traverse.

Then more junk climbing.

Mt. Russell's Fishhook Arete.

Suddenly, as I led towards the summit, I heard voices, lots of voices.  Though the route we did is very popular, there was no one on it or any of the adjacent routes.  But suddenly we popped onto the summit into a throng of people.  (Mt. Whitney is the highest mountain in the lower 48 (14,505 feet, I think), and the hiking trail is limited to 100 people per day.

I thought that the people watching was top notch, but Neale was full of hate and couldn't wait to get out of there.  Nevertheless, we had to steal a heroic summit photo amid the masses of people, which I thought was hilarious.

Walking down the Mountaineers Route, which I wouldn't recommend even to someone I didn't like.  Its a chossy ditch.

We had big plans to climb the Fishhook Arete on Russell the same day, and we had plenty of daylight, but as usual, the weather shit the bed.

Of course we walked up to the col so we could sit underneath a boulder to wait out the storm, since it had been a couple of days since we did that last.

It really hailed and turned the whole place to winter.