calpolyclimber
Jul 7, 2003, 4:58 AM
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Registered: Nov 26, 2002
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Just thought I would post a little report of my weekend in the high country for anyone who might be interested. So here's how it went-
Thursday night-
Arrive in Lone Pine at about 12:30 at night and search for a place to crash (we would have just slept in the car, but we took my buddy's Celica this time). We ended up tossing our pads and sleeping bags down on the football field of Lone Pine High School.
Friday Morning-
Wake up at 5:00 am, move camp to the entryway of the Mount Whitney Ranger Station. We saw a sign on the door that said there was one permit left for North Fork of Lone Pine. Crowds began to arive at about 7:00 am, and when the station opened, they held a lottery. I drew number one, and figured we were set. I could have sworn that when we got our permits to hike Whitney a couple summers ago they were listed as the number of GROUPS who could enter the area... Wrong... So, long story short, I got the one permit that was left to enter on Friday, and my buddies got two that were available for Saturday. The ranger who issued the permits to my buddies said "Why don't you just go out there today and scope the route" with a twinkle in his eye. He knew that we were a group.
So we did the treacherous hike up the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek to Iceberg Lake. It was a little more intense than I had imagined, but we managed.
Saturday-
One of our 3 was not feeling up for the climb, so the two of us set out toward the climb. We had some mixed information and got a little off route on the approach so we ended up getting started on the climb a little later than we had hoped. The climb was AMAZING. Thats the only way I can describe it. We apparently took one (or more) of the alternatives, because two of our pitches definitely seemed harder than 5.9. The climb was also definitely longer than the 700 feet that Supertopo.com says it is... Both these things just added to the excitement. We ended up reaching the summit just a hair before sunset (which was incredible, by the way).
Now time to get back down. Thank god we both brought our headlamps. We decided that our best option was to get down FAST, and for us, this meant rappelling down the gully between the East and West Summits. We had run into a guy coming down from the climb the night before, and he said that had worked well for his decent. So we did our first double rope rappel, had some rope sticking issues (which ended up just being massive friction, so we just inched it along), then did two more double rope rappels down to the talus. We ended up getting back to camp at midnight. What a day...
Sunday-
Pack up, hike out, drive home.
Overall, it was an incredible trip, and an experience of a lifetime. A HUGE thanks goes out to everyone who contributed to my thread about Fishhook last week. That helped us out alot. I would definitely recommend this climb.
~Alex
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