JMT Day 27- Guitar Lake to Summit of Mt Whitney to Outpost Camp

August 11, 2014

Summit Day!!

The alarm went off at 1:30 AM and Daveed was up and out of the tent before I could get my glasses on! He was PSYCHED for sunrise summit! He had hardly slept he was so excited!

Except that sunrise summit did not happen :( With the super bright moon, we could see storm clouds rolling in up and over the surrounding mountains...then a few minutes later, lighting started to flash in the storm clouds. Less than 15 minutes later it started hailing and we retreated back into the tent. Major bummer. Daveed was so sad! We could see headlamps bobbing up the switchbacks but knew that it was a bad idea to try and summit in the middle of a storm.......(dramatic irony here)

We went back in the tent to sleep more, hoping that when the alarm went off again at 5:30 that the storm would have passed. Lightning, thunder, hail and wind would come in waves every 15-20 minutes. 5:30 came and went and it was still storming. We set the alarm for 7:00 hoping it would break up by then. It didn't. We slowly got up around 7:30 and had breakfast and coffee. A lot of people passed our tent, still headed up even in the hail. We finally started to get packed up in between waves of hail, deciding that the storm was not going to break up any time soon, so we might as well get on with it. Just as we were finishing, Cameron walked by with socks on his hands for gloves and a kid's sized plastic poncho that said Yosemite on it. This was his rain gear. The boys obviously did not leave at 1:30 AM either when the storm rolled in. We gave Cameron some food (he had none left) and then the NY Boys came by. First Jon, who was so pissed, miserable, wet and cold (he didn't have any rain gear), that he didn't even stop to say hi. He barely acknowledged us and trudged by. Then Travis came by, he stopped to say hi and I gave him my last 2 Clif bars, one for him and one for Jon. The NY Boys were also out of food. Considering the bad weather, they were even more excited to get down off the mountain and to the McDonalds ASAP. They were not planning to summit, they just wanted out. Now.

Same spot from where I took the sunset photos last night, this morning unfortunately nothing but storm clouds

Cameron!

We finished packing up in the hail, with everything wet and cold. We headed up the switchbacks in the hail and wind very thankful for our rain gear. The climb up was long and exposed. We watched ourselves walk into the storm clouds at around 13,000 feet. Not too often does that happen!! I was super winded and tired, my legs protesting the whole way. We finally arrived at the trail junction that took you either to the summit, or down off the other side of the mountain. We saw the 3 boys packs at the junction, which meant they decided to summit after all!! Psyched they went up to the summit despite the nasty weather!

We have arrived at the summit trail!

We dropped our packs and switched to our tiny and feather light day packs. We grabbed all of our layers, a few snacks, some water and the flask of summit bourbon and FLEW up the summit trail! With no weight on our backs I literally felt like I was floating!! We passed the 3 boys on their way down and they were all smiles :) Their moods had lifted a great deal and they had just completed the John Muir Trail!! Psyched for them! They thanked us profusely for the extra food and Jon apologized for being such a grump and not saying hi when he passed us in the morning. We wished them a safe rest of their trip and continued up.

The clouds started to lift and thin for a minute or two and we thought YES!! Finally! The storm is breaking up! We caught a glimpse of the summit for a few brief seconds. Then a minute later the clouds enveloped us again and the wind, hail and fog were back.

The only view we got of the summit

The view of the other side of the mountain, as viewed through one of the small, narrow columns

Guitar Lake from the summit trail

Headed up to the Whitney spires

Then, about a 1/4 mile from the summit, the thunder and lighting started. And it was BAD. I was really scared. Whitney is famous for her electrical storms. As we booked it up the final 200-300 vertical feet, we came across a dad and his 20 year old daughter huddled under a giant boulder. Daveed stopped to talk to them and convince them to get out from under the boulder and into the shelter at the summit. The dad was hemming and hawing, and as I approached, I pushed Daveed forward and said "GO!!!! GET INTO THE SHELTER! WE DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS!!" I yelled to the dad and daughter to follow, and they did. Meanwhile lighting was flashing all around us with immediate ear splitting thunder claps. Daveed looked back and stopped to wait for me once and I shouted to him "GO! GET YOURSELF SAFE!".  I had this weird emotion come over me where suddenly his safety became more important than my own. All I wanted was for him to get into the safety of the shelter as soon as possible. A minute later the outline of the shelter came into foggy view and I came crashing through the door. Daveed and I both breathed a sigh of relief as we had both made it safely into the shelter. A minute later the dad and his daughter came in.

We read all the safety info on the walls in the shelter...the floor and bench were wood to help with dissipating the energy from lightning strikes. The building was grounded in several spots with several cables etc that went deep into the surrounding rocks. We listened and watched lightning, thunder, hail and wind explode outside. We had made it into the shelter just as the worst was hitting.

Once we all caught our breath and had calmed down a bit, I apologized to Daveed, the dad and the daughter for being so rude when we came across them on the trail. I just wanted us into the shelter and out of the storm, there was no time for polite conversation. The dad thanked us for convincing him to head up to the shelter. He explained how he had felt a buzz of electricity go through his hat followed by an immediate flash of lightning. They got spooked, hit the deck and then crawled under the boulder where we found them. They were not prepared for the weather at all as they had taken the rain fly from their tent, cut it in half and each wrapped it around their legs, kind of like gaucho pants. The dad was obviously nervous as he would not stop yapping. The daughter was absolutely silent, clearly very scared. I asked her if she was OK and she nodded.

Inside the shelter

We spent at least 30-45 minutes in the shelter. We had a snack, passed around the summit bourbon and tried to keep warm. We thought the storm outside sounded like it had started to dissipate, we poked our heads out to find the ground completely covered in what looked like Dippin Dots! The hail had accumulated to make a slippery white  carpet. The dad and daughter seized the opportunity to start heading down off the summit and left immediately. No sooner had they left then a group of guys arrived. We signed the summit register, I wrote "JMT 2014! Made it!", Daveed wrote "Woot!"  :) We walked away from the shelter, with caution as we could not see more than 15 feet in front of us and did not know where the edge was, to find the US Geological marker that marked the official summit then got our picture taken, took a picture of the guys- one guy took his shirt off!! and they did a shot of rum! Given the weather situation, our summit celebration was quite stifled and abbreviated. BUT! WE JUST COMPLETED THE JOHN MUIR TRAIL!!!!! YEAH BABY, WE MADE IT!! WE ARE STANDING ON THE HIGHEST POINT IN THE LOWER 48!!! WOOT!! And then we looked at each other and said "lets get the fudge off this mountain" except we didn't say fudge.

Dippin Dots!

Summit Register! Jon, Cameron and Travis' names can be seen a few spaces above ours! 

Summit Register box, we didn't bring any mementos to leave in the box except signing our names

Highest trail in the United States! Elevation from 1930 was 14,496 ft

SUMMIT SHOT! The ghost of the shelter is in the background

Newer US Geological marker from the 90's noting the elevation as 14, 505 ft

Old Geological marker

 We put on all of our warm layers and everyone headed down off the summit at the same time. We followed the path the group of guys left, grateful that they were breaking trail.

We FLEW down the trail. Just a few minutes after we left the summit the storm picked up again. The same 15-20 minute cycle that had been repeating all day. As we continued on, the hail started in BUCKETS. For about the 10th time since starting the trail, I thought to myself "I wish I was getting video of this. NO ONE back home will believe this!!". The hail would accumulated and slide down the hundreds of small gullies that made up the cliff side of the trail, like a small avalanche, and accumulate on the trail, making the hail at least a foot deep. Daveed jogged, I half jogged half skied down. There was so much hail on the trail that I could literally ski my feet along the surface, using my trekking poles for balance so I didn't topple off the side of the mountain. We both caught ourselves smiling and giggling at how much fun it was to slide down. There were a couple points where we had to slow our rolls because the trail was a bit sketchy and dangerously narrow, but other than that, we went super fast, but in control all the way down.

The lightning was visible to us, just off to our right we could see the lightning coming from BELOW us. We could see the lightning bolts leaving the bottom of the storm clouds that we were IN. Again, I was very scared. I don't pray very often, but I prayed that we'd make it down off that mountain safe. Many many times.

In less than 15 minutes, we were suddenly at the trail junction. It had taken us at least an hour to get to the summit, and it took less than 15 minutes to "ski" down it! We couldn't believe we were already at the trail junction, we had just descended more than 1000 ft!.

Back at the trail junction, this time with hail on the ground (see earlier pic). Guitar Lake is also visible in this pic, upper left 

Summit trail with a light dusting of hail. This was nothing compared to what we encountered higher up!

We stuffed our daypacks back into our backpacks and continued down the other side of the mountain, still not out of danger. But first, we had to go UP. What a cruel trick to play on us!! You have to go up a short, but steep 200 feet to reach Trail Crest before starting to properly descend down off the other side. Talk about a thigh burner! After flying to the summit with no weight on our backs, having our packs back on and immediately having to go up a steep trail was so difficult! At this point we were still running off of adrenaline, so we had no issues hoofing it up to Trail Crest, but I was definitely thinking to myself that at this moment, levitation would be really nice.

When we reached Trail Crest we could see the final 99 switchbacks that would take us down off the mountain proper. Trail Camp was at the bottom of the switchbacks 1700 ft below us. In my mind I told myself that once we reached Trail Camp we would be out of harms way, out of the storm. As we started down the first of 99 switchbacks, the hail and lightning continued to rage on. I was still scared and so was Daveed. I was silent, just trying to move as fast as I possibly could without eating shit. Daveed talks a lot when he's nervous, so he started counting the switchbacks as we descended..."99! That's 99! 98! That's 98 switchbacks we have left! 97! 97 switchbacks on the mountain! 96! 96 rocky switchbacks to go!....." It helped to entertain us both as we hauled ass down them, still partially skiing down the hail.

As we approached a switchback in the low 90's, Daveed whipped around to look at me with eyes the size of dinner plates and threw his trekking poles down. I did the same and threw my poles down. After a second, I said "What??!"  He said "I felt a buzz in my hat!" I dashed down the trail and grabbed his hand, pulling us both into a crouch about 10 feet lower, down the trail than our poles. We crouched there for a minute or two, and when nothing happened, we decided we couldn't sit there all day, so we grabbed our trekking poles and continued down the trail. A couple switchbacks lower Daveed felt the buzz in his hat again, this time going through both his ears! He whipped off his hat and hit the deck, I mirrored him and a split second later a bolt of lightning flashed next to us, striking something in the valley below. We both looked at each other with wide eyes "holy shit!! that was too close!!" We were both freaked out. We crouched on the trail a couple minutes longer then HAULED. At one point the switchbacks were shorter and we went from 70 something to 50 something in a very short time. Daveed started to lose track of how many switchbacks we had left to descend. "The left turns are the odd numbers and the right turns are the even numbers, but now they've switched! I've lost count!". Such a lovable nerd. So we continued on, not knowing how many switchbacks we had left.

After we descended about 1000 ft the temperature was warm enough for the hail to turn to rain, which meant what had been a frozen ski trail, became a flooded slip and slide. Some of the puddles had hail chunks floating in them, making them look like they were either partially frozen or not deep-- they were NOT frozen and they were very deep! Daveed and I both accidentally splashed into these stealth puddles, soaking our feet. There was run off from higher up on the trail that flooded everything below it, just like the Golden Staircase. We splashed down the trail for what seemed like forever and then finally, finally we arrived at Trail Camp. The rain started to let up a bit and people were poking their heads out of their tents. A few people waved to us and gave us the thumbs up knowing we had just come down in that terrible storm.

We decided not to stop and camp at Trail Camp, instead we continued down the mountain, aiming for one of the other upcoming campsites in the next mile or so. We continued on in the cold and rain and this is when my waterproof/windproof gloves failed. They had kept my hands warm and dry the entire day, now water was starting to seep in the finger seams. Daveed didn't bring gloves but found one on the trail up to the summit, so he wore that the rest of the day and was able to manage with one sort of dryish warmish hand. I don't know how he did it. If I didn't have gloves my hands would have been completely useless, just like the Golden Staircase day, and today it was a lot colder than that day. Although it's still disappointing that the gloves failed after 8 hours, those were the critical hours that I needed them.

We arrived at the first campsite, hopeful to stop for the day. Now that we were seemingly out of danger from the lightning, the day's activity had caught up to me and I was exhausted. Not being able to ski down the trail anymore had caught up to my feet and knees. Unfortunately all of the sites were flooded, so we continued on. We arrived at the next campsite to find the same thing, all the sites were flooded.

We trudged on to Outpost Camp hoping the sites there wouldn't be flooded. When we finally arrived, we saw a lot of other tents set up in all of the sheltered sites, but there was a large open, unsheltered area that was available. Thank goodness. We plopped our stuff down, got the tent set up and fell into it, looking forward to resting and warming up. My trail journal says "I was so tired when we got to camp that my contacts were starting to pop out of my eyes! So dry and tired!"

"Drying" out was a lost cause, as we knew from experience, so we just bunched our wet rain gear up at the bottom of the tent under our sleeping pads. I flung my now soaking wet and super heavy gloves out of the tent and left them there overnight. No hopes of them drying out, probably ever.

We were both exhausted. We took our time making hot water for tea and dinner, taking turns laying down in between efforts to rest, careful not to knock the stoves over. Daveed and I both ate a candy bar  while we waited for our dinners to cook and shared an exhausted but grateful hug that we had made it down off the mountain safely and oh yeah, we completed the JMT!! Hooray!!!

We finished eating our dinner and crashed. Lights out.

Camp at Outpost Camp, elevation 10, 352 ft (more than 4000 feet lower than Whitney's summit)