No PCT Miles… 16ish side trail miles…

Most of the time… in a normal year…especially in midMay.. a sunrise summit of Whitney is the go to - mainly because the snow is easier to walk on before it starts to melt. This wasn’t a normal year… the reports from the summiters at camp that had gone the day before were as follows:

Jedi/Summer/Deep Dive, ET al… had left camp at 12:30am… they were miserable… it was cold… their water filters froze along the way… don’t do it! And there is no snow!

Scout/WingIt had left camp a little after 5am… it was amazing… beautiful…

Puppy and his crew were at camp and summiting the same day as me… but I knew they were faster and to be honest I was starting to get a little self conscious again about how freaking slow and hard these high altitude climbs were for me… I had set my alarm to leave with them around 5… but the snooze button prevailed as an answer to hide my insecurities.

(Sidenote: Mt Whitney is technically not on the PCT, we are allowed to hike to the summit as a side trip with camping restrictions - we can’t camp any closer than Crabtree and we can only spend two nights at Crabtree total… this has us entering from the west and merging with the Whitney Portal day hikers with only About two miles left to the summit… we do not have to climb the Infamous “99 switchbacks” up… our trip is only about 7.6 miles and we started at around 10,500 in elevation from camp… )

I set out around 7 instead…. the hike was beautiful and the ability to leave most of my stuff at camp greatly reducing the weight of my pack down to about 4 lbs tot (since I had to come back this way after summiting to get back to PCT) definitely made the climbing somewhat easier… alpine lake after alpine lake were passed … marmot after marmot scurried around me in the early morning… the sun cast an amazing glow over the high peaks around me… it seriously could not have been more perfect.

Still struggling slightly with the climbing… I was feeling 100% better than the two days before… I guess there is something to acclimating… I took 5 minute breaks every 500 ft in gain starting at 12,500… which I think helped too.

My mind was still circling around wanting to share this with someone… and as if the trail knew what I needed… a simple, song shuffled onto my playlist just as I started the biggest part of the climb…. not even one of my favorite songs… but one that let me know someone was with me. The song was “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten… in all the hours I have hiked the PCT with this one playlist… I don’t recall hearing it once… but here in this moment of self doubt… of feeling all alone in an amazing experience… it was poignant… it let me know I was not alone at all… and that a dear friend lost a few years ago was still cheering me on courtside per say… her memory drove me up that hill… her memory also dug up thoughts of others that had moved on from this world… I thought of my grandfather and what he must be thinking watching me in this moment from above… And then for the rest of the climb… I thought long and hard about my late brother… lost in a combination of daydream memories… conversations with spirits from my past… i reached the summit without even realizing it… and a mixture of tears of joy, tears of amazement, and tears of comfort were falling down my face.

I spent hours at the summit… soaking it in.. the views were amazing… but the feeling inside of me from the emotional hike and accomplishment were more than anything I could feast my eyes on. I had a signal for the first time in days and called Charlie and my cousin, Ashley, and of course Hound (still recovering from his back)… I sent some texts…but mostly just sat at the highest point of the continental US thinking about the people, living and not, that had influenced my life. I struggle with accepting the love of others greatly or feeling worthy of support… and somewhere on the top of that mountain, I was able to recognize how so many different people do indeed care for me and the ways that they show it. I started to walk down writing mental notes to myself hoping to remember what I had learned today, when I returned to the real world.

Right as I passed the shelter at the top… my phone dinged one last time… my old mixed captain and a friend from Marin…Jeff, the Sierra expert, that he wanted to come hike with me in this section. Still unsure of my plan… I wobbled on committing… but then feeling like it was an answer to the loneliness that had been plaguing me… I hastily agreed.

The best view of the day was of The aptly named Guitar Lake on the way down…

When I got to camp… everyone else had packed up to get a few more miles in before attempting Forester Pass the next day. I was tired and drained from the day… and decided I could draw out Forester into two days… since Jeff was meeting me at Kearsage on Friday… pressure off - I began looking at the map to figure out the logistics of Jeff himing with me as I fell asleep.