To Scotland and Beyond: There and Back Again Part 1: The Long Expected Journey

The Mount Whitney Quest

My sister and I were named after mountains. Ever since we were little, we talked of climbing our namesake mountains together. The stars must have aligned because we got the chance to climb Mt Whitney on my sister's birthday. With the years of expectation behind this lofty goal, it is no surprise that it was difficult and full of emotion. I've been struggling with a small knee injury from Antarctica ever since my return in February. With it sometimes hurting on trips to get groceries in Edinburgh, I didn't have high hopes of a real summit attempt and I hoped to just be able to make it to the base camp - although I was going to try for the summit I got the chance! Here's my best attempt to walk you through our quest for the summit.

Learning to Breathe
We started in Edinburgh at an elevation of 240 ft above sea level (73 m). After arriving in San Francisco, we spent a night with my mom and Grandma in Berkeley (390 ft/120 m) and then a night at Lake Tahoe (6000 ft/1829 m). The next day was a longer day of driving (with a stopover at Mono Lake to see tufa where I was subjected to such horrible puns as 'Such a great deal - we get tufa one!' from my mom and 'It's not a tufa!' in Nico's best Schwarzenegger impersonation).

Mono Lake - Nico and Ruth giving the tufa monuments some scale. Very cool to see them and walk around inside the clusters. Next time, we're going swimming in the very salty water :)

We ended at Onion Valley Campground, at an oxygen-deprived elevation of 9200 ft (2804 m). We stayed at Onion Valley for 4 nights in order to get used to the elevation and do some higher practice hikes. We needed to spend a few nights to let our bodies 'learn how to breathe' at higher elevations.

14 July 2014
Our first practice hike was to Robinson Lake. Based on the limited map we had, we picked this 'short' hike. It's amazing how short a hike can look when it goes straight up a mountain...
It was good practice, got us up to a beautiful lake at higher elevation, and definitely left us with a few new sore muscles.

Elevation at Robinson Lake: 10500 ft / 3200 m

Here's the view of where we went for Robinson Lake - the trail goes up near the waterfall barely visible in the middle of the picture. There's another ridge up to the right and the lake is nestled behind that. A lot more up than it looked on the map because it didn't have many switchbacks! (Photo by Rod)

Ruth, Shasta, and Nico on the hike taking a quick break in a rare flat spot on the trail. (Photo by Whitney)

We had a pair of birds (Clark's nutcrackers) that we saw a couple of times on the hike and they posed quite nicely for us to get some photos. I love my 'new' camera :)

15 July 2014
Potholes (on the path to Kearsarge Pass). Not a long hike, but Rod assures us it is more representative of the Mt. Whitney trail - we can only hope he's right! We all found this trail much easier :)

Elevation at Potholes: 10,050 ft/ 3063 m

Found a nice rock for a break :)

Not as spectacular as many of the other places we saw, but a cute little hike nonetheless. The clouds over the mountain peaks in the background were beautiful.

Allllllvvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnn!!!!!!
(Whitney informs me this is actually a Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrel)

We had a variety of wildflowers along the trail.

The trail following the side of the valley back down to the campground (photo by Nico).

16 July 2014
Rest day! But the group couldn't help themselves and went to scope out a waterfall nearby anyway. I wandered around camp and took artsy pictures of things.

Artsy flower pictures in the campground.

Waterfall on the trail to Golden Trout Lake (Photo by Nico)

Elevation: 10000 ft/ 3048 m

We all enjoyed quite a bit of camp time in addition to the little hikes each day. I can't remember the last time I got to spend more than a day with my family in one place. We prepared our backpacks for the long trip, packed food, and Rod handed out our permits and maps. It was nice and relaxing (physically), although we were also preparing mentally for the huge hike yet to come!