Post Whitney Reflections

I recently accomplished something that wasn’t even on my bucket list a few short months ago – I summited Mt. Whitney! Hikes I took while growing up back on the east coast were glorified forest walks. In contrast, Whitney’s altitude gain is just under the elevation of the tallest peaks east of the MIssissippi. While Whitney was not a hike requiring any serious bouldering or mountaineering, it was a serious, challenging endeavor, for which I was just barely prepared. The experience taught me a lot about how I was and wasn’t ready for strenuous outdoor activities, and hopefully will serve as a springboard for even cooler activities in the future! Here are some reflections from hiking experiences over the last year.

Gear

Hiking Poles are the BEST! This may seem obvious to my fellow SoCal hikers, but as an infrequent hiker raised on the East Coast, poles were an alien experience for me. My first few hikes in LA were entirely done without poles. However, after hiking Baldy (the tallest mountain in LA County), I realized my destroyed knees needed help. I initially got poles to help with descents, and as my hikes increased in elevation gain, they ended up being invaluable in staving off bruised and blistered feet. Poles have also proven extremely useful in navigating rocky terrain, as mountains (i found out) tend to feature more rock than dirt. The additional points of contact with the ground are extremely stabilizing. Going forward, I may invest in retractable poles – my current poles are difficult to handle when trying to drink water or eat snacks while walking.

Trail maps are extremely helpful! Every trail I’ve ever hiked has been quite well marked, and I wouldn’t say that a trail map has been required. However, even on a well marked trail such as Whitney, it was a bit challenging to hike a dark trail before sunrise. There were a handful of times where we veered off the trail and had to backtrack. Having a physical map present was extremely helpful in judging where the trail’s location and heading.

For trails much longer than ten miles, having some way to extract water from the environment is supremely helpful. For reference, my Whitney hike had me consuming about 7 liters of water over 15 hours. Carrying all that water would have been exhausting, more than doubling the weight of my pack! If a trail features running water, I’d highly recommend packing light and using a water filter. We used a hand pump to filter snowmelt, and that experience was fairly uncomfortable. There are probably better methods of filtering water in freezing conditions, perhaps having a filter embedded in a water bladder, or purification tablets.

Synthetic layers are highly recommended. Growing up, I was never a fan of synthetic clothing. They never felt comfortable, and I felt like they provided inadequate protection from the elements. I much preferred layering wool and down layers to keep my insulated during the Northeast’s winters. As is probably clear to everyone else on this planet, synthetic materials are actually great at warding off wind and rain! If I had a full outer shell (rather than a down vest and cotton scarf), I may have been far less affected by the wind gusts near Whitney’s peak. Had temperatures dropped an additional 10-15 degrees, or had the wind picked up by 10 mph, my attire would have failed at keeping me warm.

On a similar note, my gloves were also on the verge of lacking for this trip. I definitely felt the cold wind through the fabric after periods of sustained gusts, sapping heat from my hands. It would take long stretches of calmer weather to warm them back up. What I noticed to be more frustrating was the inability to take my gloves off. The final 3 miles before the summit were cold enough that momentarily shedding the gloves came at the cost of tons of wind exposure. Because it was so uncomfortable to have the gloves off for any amount of time, it became difficult to eat snacks, take pictures, or undertake any activity that would require dexterity. For future hikes at altitude, I might wear a light pair of gloves underneath the outer layer, which would stave off the cold long enough to allow for fun activities such as eating! Perhaps I’ll even swap my outer gloves for…mittens!

A few nice-to-haves for a Christmas wish-list: a GoPro camera and a butt rest! While I don’t think I’ll ever look through hours of hiking footage to create a super cut of my hike for an audience of one, it does seem like it would be way easier to use than having to take out a phone to snap a few pictures. As for a butt rest, sitting on rocks and tree trunks does get a bit tiresome after a while, and while it does seem like a luxury, having a comfortable method of resting will add up over a long hike.

Philosophy

I’ve learned a lot in the past few months about how to prepare for hikes, but I’ve changed my approach to hiking as well. My attitude towards a hike has always been ‘ever forward’. I’m constantly looking to push my body a bit more, take fewer breaks, burn more calories. While this competitive side of me has certainly helped improve my hiking overall, it veers into a kind of tunnel vision – focusing only on the summit, only on the metrics. Needless to say, this mindset can result in hikes being much more of a slog, especially the descents. On this Whitney hike, there were multiple occasions where we could have benefitted from a bit less of this mindset. The dogged approach to always making progress cost us the chance to rest in enclaves from wind or refill our water bladders. If we had taken the performance hit and backtracked, our overall well being would have been markedly better.. On a similar vein, I think it’s important to take regular breaks, and actually stop for several minutes. Did you find a cool meadow or rock feature? Check it out for a minute! Admire the rivers! Making a hike solely about summiting detracts from the whole experience. A break every few minutes breaks the monotony of walking for hours, and gives your muscles a chance to relax! Finding great hiking food can also be a challenge! When walking for hours, it’s really important to carry with you food that you’ll actually like! Please don’t bring trail mix and granola bars because it seems like ‘proper hiking food’. There are a few criteria I’d look for in good hiking food: does it have a mix of simple and complex sugars to burn over a hike? Is it messy? Is it tasty? If the answers to those questions are ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘yes’ respectively, then go for it!

Hiking Whitney has been such an awesome experience, and now I’m left wondering where to go from here. Day hikes in the future will be more geared towards interesting trails, rather than the view at the top. Most peaks taller than Whitney will require mountaineering proficiency, and that’s definitely a direction i’m interested in exploring. Being able to summit Mt. Rainier, and even Denali some day, would be a dream come true. I would also be able to put those skills to use in summiting Whitney and Mt. Baldy in the wintertime. At the moment, I’m not particularly interested in rock climbing, but I also wasn’t interested in mountaineering a year ago, so we’ll see if that reticence changes! Thankfully, I do feel like I’ve quieted the hiking bug for the foreseeable future, and I’m looking forward to spending a few more weeks at sea level. Enjoy some pictures that my hiking partner and I took around the tallest peak in the continental US!