Mount Whitney (8x)

Richard Piotrowski
Rick Kent

Report

http://www.whitneyportalstore.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=004039

I'll post a short report as well, but needless to say this day was quite a struggle.  It was certainly one of the harder dayhikes I've done. Congradulations again on completing your goal Richard!  Your goal has become mine as well.  I'm grateful to have been with you on the summit and hopefully one day I will be successful in matching your accomplishment.  

It should be noted that we parked a mile below the Portal and had to use snowshoes for many miles on the "trail" both up and back.  The ascent up the snow slope to Trail Crest was agonizingly difficult due to soft snow.  Beyond Trail Crest many parts of the trail were covered over by snow at a steep angle making the traverses a bit exciting in the unstable snow.  We put crampons on just past Trail Crest and kept them on all the way to the summit.  A ferocious wind blowing over the Sierra Crest didn't help matters and made things very unpleasant.  I should probably also mention that the blowing snow that pelted our faces in the dark was the leading edge of a storm that brought snow all the way down to Lone Pine the next morning.

Log

03:11am - Started hiking up the road to the Portal
03:34am - Reached Whitney Portal Trailhead
04:01am - Reached North Fork LP Creek crossing
06:13am - Reached Outpost Camp
09:16am - Reached Trail Camp
12:26pm - Reached Trail Crest
03:13pm - Reached summit of Mount Whitney
04:48pm - Reached JMT/Whitney trail junction
05:12pm - Returned to Trail Crest (est time)
08:02pm - Returned to Outpost Camp
10:02pm - Returned to North Fork crossing
10:27pm - Returned to trailhead
11:00pm - Arrived back at car

Time from Car to Summit: 12 hrs 2 mins
Time on summit: 6 mins
Time from Summit back to Car: 7 hrs 41 mins
Total Time: 19 hrs 49 mins

Richard started at 1:15am?

Richard's Report:

Everybody sets goals in regard to their attempts on Mt. Whitney. Several years ago, while working on making the summit in every month, I also added the goal of doing a One-day ascent in each month of the year. On December 17, 2005 I finally completed this objective.

With the early season storms holding off this year, I thought the December ascent that I needed might be a walk-in-the-park. I made plans to head up to Lone Pine in late November for some acclimatization prior to a one-day ascent with Rick Kent and Scott McKenzie on December 3. As it turned out, a storm rolled in on December 1, making a summit attempt nearly impossible. I had modified my plans, and headed up on the 1st, but the winds that preceded the snow storm prevented me from making it much beyond Mirror Lake.

I had been watching the weather, and knew that only a light dusting of snow followed the December 1st storm. Optimistically thinking that the existing snow would consolidate to the point that travel would be fairly simple, I made plans for another attempt on December 15 (ten days ‘til Christmas). I left for Lone Pine late in the evening, and arrived to start the climb at approximately 3:00am. The full moon was scheduled for around 8:00am that day, so a headlamp was mostly unnecessary. I was moving at a slow and steady pace, and made Trail Camp in approximately 6 ½ hours. 

It was at Trail Camp that I realized that the day was turning into a comedy of errors. 

Slightly below Trail Camp, there is a section of the trail that becomes covered in wind-packed snow. It is fairly steep, and a mistake could cost you dearly. At this point, I had taken off my snowshoes and pack to do the traverse unloaded prior to carrying a load across. While rearranging gear, I had dropped my sunglasses. My mind struggled with the fact that I would need to down climb to get them. (I forgot to pack a backup pair.) It insisted that the glasses that I saw down slope were not mine. The logical side of me was arguing that nobody else had been up here, so they had to be mine, but the illogical side, being impacted by the altitude won out, and I left them where they lie. 

At Trail Camp, when I reached for my sunscreen, it was frozen solid, so that I couldn’t protect my face from sunburn.

I was also suffering from the lingering effects of a cold. I was standing there trying to decide who I was going to blame for this – my wife, my mother, or Eric K (who was sick on our Baldy attempt a week earlier).

Finally realizing that it would be foolhardy to continue, I turned around approximately 150 feet above Trail Camp.

On the way down, I was in one of those moods where you try anything new that you can think of. With good snow coverage, it’s amazing how straight you can keep the line down to the Portal. I was resigned to putting off the December ascent to another year.

A few days prior to this attempt, I had received an e-mail from a good friend in San Diego. He was interested in doing some snow camping up in the Lone Pine area. Since we don’t climb nearly enough any more, I agreed that I would stay up and do a day hike with them up to their camping site. As it turned out, they didn’t show up, freeing me to do other things. I started out Friday with a picture taking session in the Alabama Hills. I continued on to Hogback Road and finally ended up back at Whitney Portal Road. I followed tracks up to the high point on the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek. On the way down, at the final switchback, I ran into Rick Kent. We talked for quite a while, and I mentioned that I would try and rearrange my schedule so that I could climb with him the next day. I ended the day with some AT skiing around the Portal area. It was a very enjoyable and relaxing day.

Later in the evening, I called Rick to confirm his start time. We had agreed earlier that I was going to give myself a two hour head start, figuring that we would hook up near Trail Camp, where the real work would begin. Since he decided on a 3:00am start time, I told him that I was planning on a 12:00am wake-up call, with food at the High Sierra Café prior to the climb.

I started walking at around 1:15am. Unlike the previous attempt, I had remembered to bring two pairs of sunglasses, and put the sunscreen in my pocket to keep it warm. About five minutes up the road, I noticed that my lower legs were feeling colder than usual. I looked down to discover that I had forgotten to put my gaiters on. Damn, back down the road I go! New Year's Resolution: make a list so you quit making these stupid little mistakes!

Unlike the previous two days, the wind decided it needed to blow on Saturday. This made it a lot more uncomfortable heading up, and I thought it might make me move a little faster to keep warm, but that wasn’t the case. I made the Portal in 30 minutes, the North Fork junction in an hour, Outpost Camp in 3 ½ hours and Trail Camp in 6 ½ hours. 

I stopped for food at Trail Camp, expecting to see Rick show up at any minute. After having some food and drink, I continued up due to the extreme cold. 

While working my way up to the slope directly below Trail Crest, I thought I detected a “bulge” in the snowfield that I thought might be wind-packed snow at the right side of the slope. Although I’ve never seen this slope slide, in the back of my mind, I thought that this area to the far right might also be less susceptible to avalanche.

Rick finally caught up to me just below Trail Crest. We had been yelling back and forth about whether we had time to continue on to the summit. Rick made a statement that he was going to at least make it up to Trial Crest, and took the lead for the final bit. It’s impossible to describe that amount of work that went in to overcoming the final few hundred feet. We were both knackered! (I think that’s a Kiwi term for very fatigued.)

While I was following Rick up, I kept thinking of the Bob Rockwell image (See post below.) that hangs in the WP Store. It shows a climber on the very steep, wind packed snow that accumulates on the western side of the Sierra Crest. If this were the case, a summit attempt would be out of the question. We didn’t have it in us to overcome such an obstacle. As it turned out, it was not nearly that bad. Our discussion centered on whether we had a sub-two in us for the last two miles to the summit. We decided to give it a go, with 2:30pm as our turn-around time.

Surprisingly, I felt fairly good after a short break, and motored on in the lead. 

2:30pm came and went. At the summit plateau, I turned and looked at Rick with a wave of the hand, pointing up, or down. (We couldn’t hear each other due to the high winds.) I didn’t see any negative response, so we continued up. We reached the summit a little before 3:30pm. For me, it had been in excess of 14 hours! I had never spent this much time in any one-day attempt, and we were only halfway there.

I was very emotional as I signed the register. I had finally completed the cycle, and couldn’t believe the amount of work that had been put into it. My entry was “Please let me get down alive.” I knew that we were tempting fate with our late arrival on the summit with deteriorating weather.

My camera froze for a second time when I tried to snap some summit photos, so I wasn't able to document anything on top.

I went up and tagged the summit benchmark, sat down for a couple of seconds at the summit plaque, and then asked Rick to put the hammer down for the descent.

We made Trail Crest at dusk.

It was actually quite fun bombing down the slope below in the dark. At Trail Camp, we couldn’t find our way back to our original tracks, (the moonlight was blocked by cloud cover making it impossible to get our bearings from the surrounding terrain) so Rick led the way down the shortcut to Trailside Meadow. The rest of the trip down was uneventful, but it seemed to take forever.

Rick joked that we were in danger of missing out on our one-day attempt. The climb ended up taking me slightly less than 21 ½ hours.

This is a climb that I will always be able to look back on fondly after the pain has gone away (I have aches in spots that I didn’t think were possible). It definitely ranks as the most difficult climb that I have ever done (from the physical perspective). 

Whitney decided it wasn’t going to hand us a gimmie.

Pictures are at:
http://piotrowski.smugmug.com/gallery/1053147