After failing to summit Mt. Whitney (the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states of the US at 14498 ft.) in 1998 and 1999, I went back again but decided to backpack it to better acclimatize myself to the altitude. This time, I had 10 permits and we went in two separate groups, 4 people doing the day hike (a brutal 21 mile round trip hike) and the rest of the six of us (Sundeep, Papi, Mike, Fred, Ed and myself) backpacking it in two days. We started from the trail head at Whitney Portal around 10am on a Friday, spent the first night 4 miles into the trail at Outpost Camp. The next day, we hiked up to Trail Camp which has the last water before the summit attempt. We tried to sleep early but it was difficult in the cold and soon it was time for us to make the full moon ascent. We left our backpacks and took survival gear and water and started up the notorious 99 switchbacks up to Trail Crest at 13000 ft. Another mile from there and we reached the junction of the John Muir Trail from Yosemite. It was a spectacular full moon night and the six of us were the only people climbing the mountain at that time and despite the grueling last mile to the summit, all of us made it and were surprised to find a thru hiker of the J. M. Trail camped at the top. The last of us reached the top around 4am and we spent the next hour and a half waiting for the sun to rise. The sunrise was one of the best I have ever seen and I was finally happy to 'knock the bastard off' as Sir Edmund Hillary would say.
On returning back to the parking lot at Whitney Portal, we were surprised to find the car adjacent to our van broken in by a bear whereas ours was untouched. The one pain in the butt during this trip was having to carry a bear canister for the trip. Bears are a huge problem at the Whitney Trail apparently and they are not at all afraid of humans.
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