Mt. Whitney!

For the last few years I've been trying to get permits to hike and backpack Mt. Whitney, but I have never won a ticket through their lottery system. This year I decided we'd just go and hope for a cancellation or no-show since many people have told me that extra tickets are usually available.

Instead of just waiting until the day before to get a permit, I decided to keep calling every day to see if a permit became available and sure enough, yesterday I was able to reserve 2 overnight permits leaving Saturday to hike Whitney.

The plan is to leave Ridgecrest around 9am Saturday 9/13/2008 and head for the permit office in Lone Pine. From there we'll drive up to the trailhead and backpack up the trail as high as we can and setup camp for the night. The hope is that we'll be able to make it to the base of the switchbacks. I don't remember exactly, but I believe this is about 8 miles into the trip.

Sunday after breakfast, we'll separate the camelbaks from our full packs and head to the peak. On the way back down we'll grab our stuff that we had left and head the rest of the way down. I'm sure we'd be able to do this hike in one day, but we'd both rather spend more time and enjoy the hike instead of having to rush the entire time.

I'll be sure to post plenty of pictures when I get back.