Greetings from Lone Pine -- Gateway to Mt. Whitney.
The objective? Hiking Mt. Whitney.
Yep, again...
BUT
Not once...
But twice...
There is a gentleman we know who does the Mt. Whitney Trail twice in one day. He goes up to the summit, comes back down, rests for 30 minutes, and then goes back up. He doesn't do the full 22 miles...
There are shortcuts...
Shortcuts the park rangers don't want the public to know.
But when you see the rangers on the trail...
You observe them, then you follow them.
Then you find out their secret.
Some scrambling involved.
And another shortcut...
The ranger tent near Outpost Camp...
Only this one you really need to have good navigation and orienteering skills. This one required some research on the Internet. Interesting how this mysterious "trail" came to be.
You can trim a 22-mile roundtrip hike down to 17 miles.
I will attempt to summit twice, although I will do it 2 days in a row.
The only thing that will stop me is the snow accumulation at the cables, and, of course, the weather.
I will be packing very light and moving very fast the first day.
The second day is a wild guess.
Call it "altitude sickness" or "acute mountain sickness" -- either way, you have to be crazy to do something like this.
Then again...
There is nothing like a challenge.
