If you are reading this article, and have not read pt. 1, please read pt. 1 first, and then come back. Enjoy!
We all woke up after having a great night of sleep, which I feel set the wrong tone for the upcoming day we had ahead of us. We set off, away from camp, quite slowly and got to the river crossing which we thought would be quite far in, at around 11am. We were all in a good mood and decided to have a hot lunch, since we had brought too much food for the trip anyway. Looking back on it, we underestimated what we had to hike in a day, again. This helped create a powerful mindset later on. Continuing on, rejuvenated, and onto the steep Guyot Pass, our journey grew difficult and hot, but we made it through with little difficulty, and up into a more flat valley, completely surrounded by intimidating mountains.
What I didn’t realize then was that we had to hike up one of those mountains to continue on our journey, and that it would have to happen on that very same day. It was quite a struggle getting up that second pass, but we finally managed it and felt so relieved that the hardest part of the day was over.
While this all had been difficult, the descent felt the longest. After those passes we made our way down again into a new, and barren valley. Yet, this was not our destination, and we still had to descend further into another—more green—valley.
After a long-lasting day, we finally made it to camp at Whitney Creek Meadow. We set up camp and saw more and more chipmunks—which we dubbed Jerrys—and even a few marmots—which we dubbed Steves. We ended the third day—which well and truly felt like it was never going to end—feeling quite accomplished, but knew what was still to come on one of the following days: the summit.
Now, luckily for us, day #4 was supposed to be much more relaxing, with only few easy miles and a few steep inclines on the way to the upper lake above Guitar Lake. It was an easy day compared to the ones before. We made it to our destination at around noon, and decided to take a two hour break. We were all happy to have a day off, for right in front of us, looming above, was Mt. Whitney. It was so close, and so, with all of the time we had left that day, we thought, why not summit today? We discussed the various pros and cons and decided to go ahead with it. This was it. This was the summit.
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