Hiking Whitney is the most difficult – hard to get a permit, need training to be ready for this hike NOT like other hikes. Even though you are in a good shape, I don’t think it’s that easy to summit because of the weather. Depends on the temperature especially with wind blowing 20 – 30 MPH (mile per hour). It’s about 21 miles round trip and 6,000 feet of elevation. WOW!
We arrived Lone Pine early in the morning. Drove all night (almost!) and got to the Whitney Portal was like we did something good already. The Mt Whitney Portal has everything from campsites and waterfalls to a restaurant and fishing lake. You could spend a lot of time just camping here and taking in the sites without even going on the Mt. Whitney Trail.
We got a permit for next day but we thought it would be better if we could spend some time in high elevation to acclimate – 8,000 feet at the Portal. You would tell the air would different than down to Lone Pine town. Well, it was close to 100 degree hot weather as usual in Summer.
We decided to hike up to Lone Pine Lake – The first major checkpoint that you will arrive at is that of the beautiful Lone Pine Lake 2.5 miles in, no permit required. Before that we had to try pancakes. Out of nowhere pancakes in the mountain? Pretty sure everybody heard about it. Even non-hikers would drive up there and try it out. It’s giant pancake!
We started around 11am from the official start of the Whitney. I was getting nervous about the hike already! I had a problem with elevation but there’s a worse problem – I can’t do a long hike. My longest hike was 22 miles which it took me more than 15 hours to come back down. I couldn’t feel on my legs at the end. It was awful! I was afraid that hiking Whitney was the worst idea ever. Compare how long we’d hike next day, hiking to up to Lone Pine Lake was just a small, simple hike for us. Besides, we have done before (a while ago). I remember how much I loved seeing the way the perfect water reflected its surroundings. Still, it was beautiful as I remembered. The lake had a beach and mountain that rises way above it.
Too bad that we won’t see the lake tomorrow. We would been started at 3am and by the time we got up there around 4am which we were still in dark. Even just explore around the lake would been great!
