Climbing Mt. Whitney

These are pictures and videos from a three day backpacking trip with Stéphane and Darlene to summit Mt. Whitney (14,505 ft).  Second time for me!  (Here’s the first.)

We chose to camp at Outpost Camp (10,400 ft), a relatively short 3.8 miles from the Whitney Portal trailhead at 8360 ft. However, this made for a long summit day of over 14 miles round trip. We made it though and enjoyed a beautiful day and stupendous views all along the way!

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Backpacking Up Pine Creek/Italy Pass

Labor Day Weekend with Mike, Jeanie, Troy… and Chloe!  We camped out in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine with the intention of getting a trail permit to climb Mt. Langley (near Mt. Whitney) but given how quickly all the trailheads filled up that weekend, we were lucky to have any entry within a few hours drive.  So, Pine Creek it was.  This is the pass just north of Mt. Tom, near Bishop, CA.  We were out for two nights and did a bit of peak climbing/scrambling on the middle day and snagged some awesome views. After coming back out of the backcountry, we enjoyed a hot dip at Mammoth Hot Springs before heading home back over the Sierra Nevada.

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Backpacking into Desolation Wilderness

Melissa came out from Minnesota to join me and some friends (Jeanie, Mike, Llana, Nora and Chloe!) on a weekend-long backpacking trip into the Desolation Wilderness (near Lake Tahoe).  We worked our way from Loon Lake to Buck Island Lake, Rockbound Lake, and eventually Rubicon Reservoir.

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