I climbed a mountain!

My friend Donny called me up in September and said he had some extra passes to climb Mt. Whitney and asked if I wanted to go. I've never climbed a mountain and wasn't in particularly good shape but jumped on the opportunity anyway. I've had a growing desire the last year or two to 'do stuff' and this seemed to fit in perfectly. Really what it comes down to is wanting to do worthwhile things as opposed to just being busy all the time. Anyways, I made it to the gym a bunch of times to run hills on the treadmill and get some time on the stairmaster as well as climb Mission Peak with a 25-35lb pack 3 times. Plus I got to buy a bunch of fun new stuff from REI for the trip (20dg sleeping bag, trekking poles, etc.).

It ended up just being me, Donny and his boss Russ that went which worked out well since we only needed 1 tent, stove and water filter between the 3 of us. We left Fremont at 3:30am on Friday the 17th to drive to the base at 8,000 feet. We then hiked up to the first camp at 10,000 feet to spend the night.

In the morning we headed up to the summit with just day packs which was nice. Our packs were 33-35lbs for the first leg but more like 15lbs for the summit leg. By the time we got to the top the packs were actually pretty light since we had drank most of our water and were wearing all our clothes.

It was a beautiful hike up until it started to lightly snow and get kind of windy at around 13,000 feet.
Unfortunately after you get to crest in the picture above, you go down a ways and traverse 3 miles until coming back up to the summit.
The summit is actually a ways off to the right of the peak in this picture of one of the lakes below.
The peak in this picture is actually the summit.
It was quite cold up top (23 dg according to the $10 Harbor Freight temp sensor I brought) and it was nice to have the summit house to warm up and relax a little in.

The view from the top.

The road you see down at the bottom is where we drove in. Our hike actually started in the trees about 1/3 of the way up the picture.When we came back down it was late and dark and cold, and we were very happy to see our sleeping bags.
When we got up in the morning the stream where we got water had formed several small ice dams. It was pretty neat looking actually.We actually overslept our alarms in the morning and then hiked back to the car and were on our way home. We then made it back to Fremont around 6pm Sunday. It was a long and tiring weekend but it was a lot of fun too. I think if I climb it again, I'm going to go in the summer when it's warmer. Granted, I'm probably not going again any time soon, but you never know.