Mount Whitney

As Innes said in the last blog, last Thursday we got a permit to climb Mount Whitney. Whitney is 14,496 feet high (4418m). This is a good 1,000 feet higher than any mountain I have ever climbed, although Innes has been higher than this in the Himalayas. So I was apprehensive about how I would cope with the altitude. It’s also a beautiful and impressive mountain, with big cliffs on the eastern side but a flat summit plateau and a gently sloping western side – a bit like Ben Nevis in shape.

Whitney at sunrise, photo taken from our high camp

There are two popular ways of getting up Whitney. Most people walk up the Mount Whitney Trail, which is 11 miles long and goes round the back of the mountain where it is less steep. More adventurous is the Mountaineer’s Route, which takes a fairly direct line up the east side and involves a bit of scrambling. This seemed to be very popular with guided parties. Because Whitney is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States, lots and lots of people want to climb it, including people who have never been up a mountain before (again, a bit like Ben Nevis). Unfortunately some of these people attempt to climb the Mountaineer’s Route rather than going up the trail, despite all of the warning signs at the bottom trying to put them off.

Our plan was to climb Whitney by the East Buttress Route and then descend the Mountaineer’s Route. The East Buttress Route roughly follows the right hand skyline of Whitney in the picture above. It’s about VS and 11 pitches long. To do this we had to walk in on the first day to camp at a place called Iceberg lake, at 12,600 feet. I found the walk in hard – we started at 8,000 feet, so it was a lot of ascent, at altitude, carrying a heavy pack.

View up towards Whitney on the approach

The place where we camped was fantastic. A really unspoilt, pristine place. Perhaps the Americans have got it right with their permit system – there were a few other people camped there, but not many, and none of them were planning to do the same route as us. One reason it’s so pristine there is that it is illegal to leave ANY waste behind – and that includes human waste. So we discovered the delights of pooing in a bag and carrying the bag around with us for a couple of days (they do give you a special bag, called a “wag bag”, which is supposed to be leak proof and contains a deodourising powder).

Camp at bottom of Whitney

It was a pretty cold night – it was definitely below freezing, as our water bottles were frozen and I had to break the ice on the lake in the morning to get water. Once the sun came up it was pretty warm, and it was an absolutely perfect day – not a breath of wind and no clouds in the sky.

Me getting water from Iceberg Lake

The East Buttress Route turned out to be brilliant. Not too hard (which was just as well as the smallest bit of exertion left me gasping like a fish), exposed, and following a great line. We had the route to ourselves again.

Innes climbing pitch 5

Then we popped out onto the summit and entered a different world, as there were at least 30 people there. It was fun to surprise all of these people by emerging right onto the summit, having climbed what looks from above like a sheer cliff – they were very impressed, and congratulated us heartily.

Crowd on the summit of Whitney

At this point it was about 1.00pm, and we mentally relaxed thinking that it would just take us a few hours to get down. We didn’t realise that the day’s drama hadn’t yet begun. We had just started scrambling down the Mountaineer’s Route, when we met a party of four who were on the way up, who turned out to be in quite a bit of trouble. The two more experienced members of the party had gone on ahead and were climbing up the rocks that we were climbing down. The other two, who had apparently never done any climbing in their lives, were trying to traverse across a snow slope to get to an easier way up. In doing this one of them, a guy called Kevin, had slipped and fallen and gashed his leg badly. The other one, a woman called Sachi, appeared to be completely exhausted. When we arrived Kevin was apparently unable to move, Sachi who was close to him when he fell was too scared to try and get across to him, and the other two members of the party were too scared to climb back down what they had climbed up. To make things worse this party had set out from Whitney Portal (at 8,000 feet) at 2.30am, having had no sleep the night before and having come straight from sea level. They really had no business being on the mountain, and we were surprised that they had got so far. Even if nobody had been injured, they would have been in trouble (Innes says I shouldn’t be judgmental, but the more I think about it the more angry I get, particularly at the so-called experienced members of the party, who put their friends in a lot of danger).

Anyway we helped them out. Innes bandaged up Kevin’s wound, which luckily wasn’t bleeding too much (it was pretty nasty – at least half an inch deep) and we got him and Sachi and the rest of the party to a safe place. We then managed to convince them that the only sensible thing for them to do was to go back down the way that they had come up, as although they were close to the summit there was no way they were going to get there. We also thought that they all needed to get down as quickly as possible – they all seemed to have altitude sickness to some extent, and Kevin was in shock and quite confused. Then we shepherded them down the Mountaineer’s Route to where we had camped at Iceberg Lake. This wasn’t difficult, just a bit of steep scree and scrambling, but it took Kevin and Sachi more than 3 hours to descend, and we had to give them a rope in a couple of places.

Me helping Sachi down the Mountaineer’s Route

When we got to Iceberg Lake I’m afraid we abandoned them, as we wanted to get down ourselves. From there it was just walking, they had plenty of food and water, and we reckoned that the two fit members of the party would be capable of getting them down, although we thought it would probably take them until well after midnight. I hope they got down okay.

We were back at Whitney Portal in time to have the famous burgers and fries from the Whitney Portal Store for dinner – tired but happy!

Today we’re having a rest, and then we plan to do a few days cragging before heading back into the mountains.

Best wishes to all

Ruth