Last week I was invited to hike Mt. Whitney this past Friday and even though that gave me no time to train, like most people, I decided I was up for the challenge. We made the 4 hour drive to Lone Pine, the town below the mountain, and then drove up the narrow 2 lane highway to Mt. Whitney. I wasn't sure if I could make it to the top but i certainly wanted to try. We went to sleep in the car around 8:30pm and got up to get ready for the hike at 1:30am. At 2 am a group of 7 of us started the long journey to the top. Two of the men we were with chose to go at a slower pace and made the journey upwards on their own. We then lost another group member to a sickness he had been batteling for the past 2 days, and he hiked back down the mountain to go back to sleep. There was then me and 3 men around the age of 60 making the long hike up and they had all climbed Mt. Whitney before. I had read it was good to eat every 2 hours so I made a point to do that as well as drink a lot of water as to not get dehydrated. The rocks seemed to keep getting steeper and harder to climb as my legs were starting to hurt. Around 5 am we were able to turn off our head lights and let the dusk light guid us along the path. As we got higher, so did the sun. To see the sun rise on such an enormous piece of rock was amazing. It took us 5 hours to do 6 miles to base camp at 12,000 ft. Base camp is only 5 miles from the top of Mt. Whitney but it would have taken us another 7 hours to get to the top and back down to base camp and then another 5 or more hours to hike back down to where we first started. It was at this point that I decided that I was done. 12,000 ft was a huge accomplishment for me and I decided my body just couldn't handle another 12 or so hours of hiking. While 2 of the men continued on to the top me and another man in our group started the hike back down. By the time we got back to the cars we had been walking for 10 hours and my whole body hurt. I had drunken enough water to not get dehydrated and I had only gotten a mildly sunburn.

I think that I will start training now to try and hike to the top next year. It is definitely something I want to accomplish and I am very proud of myself for getting as far as I did, especially without any training!