Completing the Lowest to Highest Route! Days 9-10.

This post describes the final two days of our time on the Lowest to Highest Route. We tackled Mt. Whitney in the winter, which was a challenge right on the edge of our comfort level. The mountain was beautiful and exciting, but it was also cold, snowy, and at high elevation. Ultimately, we completed the “Lowest to High-ish” route, because we turned around two miles shy of the summit.

Day 9 – Mt. Whitney Take 2 – Miles 136.8 – 145.0

We spent the week in Lone Pine working remotely for our regular employers and researching winter ascents of Mt. Whitney every chance we got. We stopped by Elevation Sierra Gear Shop three times to learn and pick up gear: ice axes, crampons, and snowshoes. We owe a huge THANK YOU to John, one of the shop owners, for all of the advice he gave us about climbing Mt. Whitney this time of year. We decided to go for it!

We started walking at about 5:30 in the morning. It’s 11 miles from the base to the summit, so we were optimistic to have it done by lunchtime. The trail was pretty easy at first, but as the snow got deeper it got harder. Fortunately, the first five miles of the day were packed down by a previous hiker’s snow shoes, but at 5 miles that hiker turned around, and we put on ours to break the trail. This made the hiking much slower and more tiring, but it was still mostly non-technical. None of the day felt dangerous in terms of falling down the mountain. The snow was soft and we could kick in steps whenever it got steep. But, it was slow moving.

We started the day’s big challenge a little before 1:00 — going straight up the Mt. Whitney chute. This is a steep climb (up to 45°) gaining 1200 feet with no trail. During the summer season, hikers go up a famous series of switchbacks adjacent to the chute (the “99 switchbacks”), but with all of the snow on the ground those switchbacks were buried. Our research ahead of time suggested that when the switchbacks are buried, the chute is an easier and safer way up than attempting to follow the nonexistent trail. On the cute, the soft snow made us move extremely slowly, and it was tiring as we counted steps to the top. We made it up at 3:30, and we were so exhausted and cold that we decided to camp right there. At 13,700 feet, we pitched our tent and climbed in. This is our first night camping before sunset on the whole trip! Our toes are slowly regaining feeling as I write this… 2.5 hours after we got here 😳.

We’re shy of the summit by just 2 (hopefully easy) miles and 800 feet of elevation! This was a challenging but rewarding day! We missed collecting water from the last stream before everything turned to ice, so we’re boiling snow to make water. For dinner we had souped up ramen with miso and sunflower seeds. Yum! -T

Day 10 – Our Exit – Miles 145.0-154.0

Sleep didn’t come easy overnight. Our sleeping bags and extra layers kept our bodies warm, but our toes hurt from the cold all night, and we both have headaches from the elevation. It seems like my (Tim) toes hurt more than Renee said hers do, but she woke up with a worse headache than me. Upon sunrise, we found ourselves less enthusiastic to tackle the final two miles than we expected. We camped only two miles from the summit, but two miles never felt so far.

We decided to pack up and do a test walk of only a few hundred yards to an important trail intersection. In 2018 we summited Whitney from a different approach which connects with our current route at this intersection. So, making it to this intersection would mean that we have “section-hiked” the Lowest to Highest Route — we hiked 2 miles of the route in 2018, and the other 145 miles in 2024. Nevertheless, we assumed that once we started hiking things would get easier and we’d just decide to keep going all of the way to the summit. We didn’t.

We hit the intersection and just wanted to head back down, so we did. We backtracked to the chute, and then we had to glissade down it (ie slide down the snowy mountain on our butts). We were intimidated by the glissade, but we know that it’s a pretty standard technique when mountaineering, so we built up our confidence and went for it! It was great. We timed it, and it took us only 9 minutes to descend the stretch we spent 2.5 hours climbing yesterday! By using our ice-axes as rudders, the glissade was controlled and felt very safe.

At the bottom we found a sunny place to rest. We took off our shoes to warm up our feet and got out a sleeping bag. We spent about 30 minutes warming up in the sun, which was especially nice for our freezing cold feet. Then we got back to hiking, and it was a pretty easy and uneventful day returning to the car.

We were all done and started the drive home before sunset. -T

Reflections a few days later

Climbing Whitney in the snow was amazing! It was hard for us given our previous mountain climbing experience, but the only way to gain more experience is by doing. We did a lot of research ahead of time, talked to experts, picked up additional gear to make sure we were prepared, and brought extra food in case something went wrong. A few avoidable things did go wrong, and we’ve learned from them.

• The first mistake is that we pushed too hard on the first day. The whole climb would have been more fun (and brought us to the summit) if we had taken breaks and maybe even decided to camp at 1:00 pm on day 1 instead of deciding to go up the chute right then. We were so excited about making it to the top that we just kept walking, which left us cold and exhausted.
• Our most avoidable mistake is that we didn’t pick up snow gaiters. We wore waterproof shoes and our usual dust-gaiters, but we didn’t pay enough attention to the possibility of snow getting in through the ankles. Our feet were extremely cold and our shoes were frozen on the inside from walking in the deep snow. At the top of the chute, I (Tim) tried to take my shoes off and learned that my right sock was actually frozen to the inside of my shoe. I ended up sliding my foot out of my sock, and then pulling really hard on the sock to break it free of the shoe. Post trip, I discovered I have a moderate case of frostbite on both of my big toes. They are on track to fully heal, but I’m glad we didn’t spend any extra time attempting to summit because that could have made the frostbite much more severe.
• Finally, we didn’t bring enough water up from low elevation. This wasn’t a serious mistake (because we had plenty of fuel to boil snow into drinking water), but it was a waste of time and energy. We didn’t know when we’d hit the last source of running water until we had passed it. Next time, we’ll just deal with the extra water-weight to have some more insurance.

Despite the above mistakes, we learned SO MUCH on this climb. We are both in one piece and can’t wait for our next winter mountaineering trip (not yet scheduled), when we’ll be able to use what we’ve learned to have an even more exciting trip! We now own ice axes, so we have to make sure to put them to use!

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