Day 2 - Click on Map
Day 2 (July 27) started out at about 4 am when Mike and I got up and started to break camp. Not much sleep the night before with all of the drones marching by and the two rockslides. We even had one hiker come by at about 4:30 with his headlamp asking us if this was the trail to Whitney! Hate to see what would have happened later on up the trail if he was not sure where he was!

We started up the remainder of the climb to Trail Camp, which turned out to be about a 400 foot climb over the last half mile or mile from Trail Side Meadow. Getting up to Trail Camp, I took use of the solar toilets and that is when I started to feel a little woozy again. I did not have any of the signs of altitude sickness you read about (headaches, vomiting or nausea), just had no energy. Thinking my blood sugars where out of whack I snacked on some more mangos and nuts again and rested for about 20 minutes. Once we started up the switchbacks, I ran out of steam again. This time I was really wondering if I had what it took to do this trip! Mike grabbed my bear canister to lighten my load and we trudged up the hill. I did fine with the lighter load, but Mike was laboring up the hill. We made Trail Crest by about 10 am, which did not leave Mike enough time to summit Whitney before the afternoon storms approached. The clouds were already starting to build. He also did not have much energy left after carrying the additional 10+ pounds up the hill. I was feeling fine, but tired at the top of the hill and did not feel any signs of altitude sickness again. This was starting to get interesting!

Looking down the switchbacks to Trail Camp seemed like looking out of the airplane window. You could see the solar toilets way below, but the view to the west was awesome! Hitchcock Lakes, Guitar Lake, etc. were amazing! We headed down the west side making our way to Guitar Lake for lunch. Mike was still carrying the extra load, but finally gave up about a half mile to Guitar Lake, where I took his pack and he took mine. I know he was thinking that he didn't want to go through this again! We had a nice lunch at Guitar Lake and rested our feet before heading down to Crabtree. Unfortunately the calm was before the storm and right as we were heading out of there the afternoon storms began. This time the rain started at about 12:30 and it started to really come down on our way down to Timberline Lake. We ducked under the last few trees that were not occupied and got some shelter from the hail and heavy rain. Off in the distance on the ridge to the south we heard that familiar rock slide sound and were treated to quite a show. It is amazing what a little (actually a lot!) of water will do to the rocks and mountain side. The rain let up a bit and we headed down the trail/creek towards Crabtree. By this time the trail had water running all through it and we were just trudging through and our feet were getting soaked.

We made it to just outside Crabtree along the JMT side of the trail and set up camp and waited out the remainder of the storm. As usual, it broke up around 5 pm and we took advantage of what little sun we had to try and dry our clothes a bit. The sun kept moving around so we were always changing rocks to use for the dryer! We settled down for the evening and had a good dinner and hit the sack. Tonight we each prepared for the night's rest with the help of some Advil PM. It sure helped us both get a good night's sleep! Again during the night I noticed the headlamp drones making their pilgrimage towards Whitney!

To view photos of our trip please refer to the Photo Albums section of this site!