I received a random text from my friend Shannon Thursday afternoon about hiking the Whitney trail on Friday. A few hours later we were on our way to Lone Pine to hike the trail the next morning. I had tried to get a permit for the next day... turns out they need at least 2 days for the "night drop box" permits. So we were stuck with a 0800 start at the permit station and were up at the trailhead by 0930.
The weather was gorgeous, not a cloud in the sky and temps hovered right around 60 degrees. We made trail camp by 1230, took an hour-long lunch break and then headed up the switchbacks. At the crest the winds picked up a bit... nothing a windbreaker couldn't fix and we topped out at 1530, spent an hour enjoying the summit and headed back down. Right past trail camp it got dark. The moon was full and we made a good steady pace all the way back down. We arrived at the trail head at 2130... exactly 12 hours car to car. There was a group of cyclist getting ready to go up... after just completing a 100+ mile bike ride!!! (something about Badwater???).
This was my third time up... felt much better than the first time I went up on the Whitney Trail (its also a lot nicer knowing what you're getting into).
