August 2021
Whitney-looks daunting but the reality is different
Garret and I climbed it , accompanied by 2 very experienced mountaineers .Todd Offenbacher and Abe Greenspan.
One to one ratio on the rock climbing part makes it faster and more efficient.
Whitney is the highest mountain in the lower 48 , at 14,505 feet.
We acclimatized by rock climbing Pywiak Dome in Yosemite – 6 pitches , 5.7 , and single pitches around Mammoth Lakes at Benton Crag.
The route we took was the Mountaineers Route, a steep gully filled with loose rock. We spent the night at Iceberg Lake (12,600 feet).
At 4 am the next day we took the East Buttress route, which is graded 5.7-5.8, with massive drop offs , very intense exposure and steep crack, face and friction climbing with multiples pinnacles. .It’s trad, and for a total of 11 pitches for. total of 1,500 ft of technical climbing.
The day ended up in the late afternoon, and after one more night spent by the lake we descended and celebrated with a big cowboy steak in Lone Pine.
My take away from climbing it:
Don’t let a first impression cloud your mind.
It looked daunting and unf..kable to climb this mountain-when I saw it first time from a distance in April
But once I started climbing it , I realized that this was not the case.
Visualizing and braking down in smaller sections made a huge difference .
It was overall less tiring than Mt.Baker or Mt.Wood, and lots of the scrambling sections and especially the rock climbing part it was a lot of fun(as long as I did not think that here I am on the tallest rock in the lower 48)
I”ll apply this concept to the day to day life
