Mt Whitney 1, us 0
After about 3-4 hours of sleep, we awoke in our hotel Friday morning, packed into the cars and drove to the Whitney portal at 8,300 ft. I couldn't help but feel that it was an ill fated trip. George and I forgot one sleeping bag in LA, there were some emotional things that I was/am still ignoring, and Mike left my gps charging at the hotel. I remember thinking as we started up the mountain, "Well if anyone is going to be injured this trip, I think I'm the one already on a bad luck streak."
Around 10,600(?) we hit the first snow. The mountain was absolutely gorgeous. We passed waterfalls and lakes, crossed over streams, and in the afternoon we cleared the tree line and started our ascent up the desolate snow covered trail. It was warm enough on Friday that the snow was slushy. We didn't need our crampons or ice axe.
We arrived at Trail Camp around 3:30 (about an hour and a half later than we would have liked). We set up camp and attempted to show everyone how to self arrest. However, by this time the winds were whipping around. Apaprantly there were about 30 mph winds with up to 60 mph gusts. This resulted in the snow hardening in a rocky pattern and we couldn't slide down the slope and try self arresting. The sun was also going down and we wanted to eat and relax and get some sleep. I was a little uncomfortable at this time with how little everyone else practiced with their ice ax. Around this time I started to feel pretty bad too. My emotions were a little wrecked and my head was pounding. Of course some part of me decided to suffer through the pain rather than take any medicine and that resulted in my whole body almost giving up for awhile. I forced myself to try to help with the class and then I forced down a little dinner but I mainly spent the night by myself in the tent trying to feel better while other people filtered the water and made dinner. :-/ By this time the wind was whipping around and freezing everyone. Dan ended up failing through the ice into the lake when he went to get water for everyone to filter. I was worried about him but he didn't seem all that bothered.
Night rolled around, g came into the tent and we found a way to stay (mostly) warm with only one sleeping bag. I think that he took some of the cold on his back in order to keep me nice and toasty all night :-) I was surprised at how well this worked out in the end. Morning rolled around and the wind was still whipping around outside. Everyone stayed mostly in their tents until 9:30 when Marsh, Mike, Dan, and G went out to discuss the plan of action. They decided that it would be crazy to try to attempt the climb while this cold, with the wind and without enough practice. They were going to wait an hour to see if the wind died down and if it hadn't they were going to call the hike and we would go back down. At 10:30 the wind was still whipping around, so we decided to pack up our stuff and head back to the car. Around 1, everything was cleaned up and packed and everyone had their cramp-ons on. Of course this is when the wind finally died down.
This was the hard part. Now some of us felt that we could attempt to go higher but 1) our turn around time was supposed to be at 2 and that was only an hour away. 2) we had packed up our gear already so we wouldn't have the tents to come back to and it would mean either leaving some people in the cold since not everyone was going to summit, or splitting up the group and having one team go down. We had agreed that we would not split up the group. 3) I was still a little uncomfortable with the lack of self arrest experience that everyone had. It was a hard decision since now we could feel the goal in sight but knew that the best decision for the whole group was probably to turn back around. So with some sadness, we agreed that the best decision was for everyone to go back down.
The trip down was relatively easy. Since the switchbacks were all snowcovered, we ended up cutting a lot of distance off the trip by just walking straight down the mountain. Also the snow was basically ice we also got the chance to use our crampons. And I got to the bottom without injuring myself. Well I did have one close call: Since the trail was snow covered, we basically had to follow other people's footsteps in the snow to get back down. At one point, we realized that the footsteps were leading us down into a stream and we weren't sure how sturdy the ice was anymore. We decided that the best plan was to go over some rocks and follow some other footprints to the right of us. I started crossing a huge boulder. About halfway across there was a dip and I decided that I would feel more comfortable taking the dip if I sat down first and lowered myself down it. That was when I realized my mistake. One of the most important rules about wearing crampons is that you do not wear them while glissading (slidding down the mountain on your ass). This is because if your crampons hit the snow and dig in, they will stay while your body keeps sliding and you will most likely break your leg. When I sat down on the rock with my ski pants I instantly started sliding. The rock was covered in slippery lichen. I found myself in a dangerous situation. One hand was holding me and a 35 pound bag from sliding down a slipperly slope while I tried to keep my feet from touching the rock. My other hand was holding my ice axe. I tried to yell G's name to warn everyone but he didn't hear me. So I promptly let go of the ax so that I could use the other hand to stablize myself too. This also got everyone's attention so that I could tell them to take their crampons off before going across the rock. Finally I carefully lowered myself to a spot that wasn't as steep so that I could take my crampons off with one hand while I held myself up with the other. With one leg free I could put it down and it was easy to take off the second crampon. It took a little bit for my heart to stop racing but nothing bad happened :-) The rest of the trip down was stress free except for one little bushwhacking section.
All in all it was an amazing trip. The mountain was so pretty. And we've decided snow covered Mt Whitney will not have the best of us. Next Memorial Day will be "Mt Whitney Snowy Summit Attempt-Take 2"
pics: http://www.whack.org/~dan/whitney/?M=A
http://photos.mirzu.com/main.php?g2_itemId=4527 - Whoops, this is what I meant to post.