California - Hiking Mt. Whitney

Jimbojack · September 11, 2007

This weekend my wife and I spent 2 days going up Mt. Whitney. On saturday we went up to base camp and spent the night there. Unfortunatly I had a problem with my knee and was not able to make it all the way up to the summit, so I waited at our tent while my wife went up in the morning on the second day. After she descended from the summit we packed up all our gear and walked down to the car and drove back home.

View from the visitor information center, right of the highway 395

Driving towards Whitney portal

Pictures from the trail

Stream near mirror lake

Mirror lake

Peak behind mirror lake

View from our tent

5:30AM view

On the way to the top

Top of Mt. Whitney

Campsite in the morning

Stream

Marmot on the trail. There were lots of them at our campground, rangers told us to leave our tents and backpacks open so they can go through them if they want. Otherwise they can tear them to pieces

Small stream near trailside meadows

Here I am on the way down

Hikers coming down

Small waterfall

Crossing a stream

Bear warning sign

More photos from the hike are on my website.

I wish I could have made it to the top, but I decided not to since my knee was in pretty bad shape. After a couple of days of wearing a brace, it's better but I will still need a couple of weeks before it's back to normal.

On the way up to the summit my wife took the d200 with the 17-55 with her and some water. She told me many people were surprised that she was carrying such a huge camera all the way to the top