Horseshoe Meadows to Whitney Portal Day Hike - 10.11.08The three Dick's:
GigaMike aka Mike Mellin aka Richard M. Mellin
Richard P. aka Richard Piotrowski
Graham aka Rick Graham aka Richard Graham
Richard P. emailed me earlier in the week and asked if I still wanted to attempt this hike before winter settled in, so of course I replied with "How about this weekend?". Richard was quick to respond with a "I hope you would say that!". Richard also contacted another friend, Mr. Rick Graham, and asked if he would be interested in joining us. Rick also was quick to reply with a "When are we starting?". So after checking the weather forecast throughout the week, we all agreed that it looked good enough to go for it.
We all met at the Portal Friday night and jumped into Rick's RAV4 and headed over to Horseshoe Meadow where we would get a few hours sleep before starting at midnight. With two alarms set to go off just before midnight, Rick and I laid out our sleeping bags outside next to the RAV4 under clear skies (Richard didn't bring his sleeping mat, so he slept inside). After promptly falling asleep, I was awakened about a half hour later to a face full of snow. I gave out a light laugh before waking up Rick to let him know it was snowing. We both got up and jumped into the RAV4 with Richard. After falling back asleep, Rick woke us up to let us know that we somehow slept through both alarms and it was now 1:55am.....Doh! We quickly got up and hit the trail sometime between 2:15 and 2:30am. We checked Rick's thermometer in his RAV4 before leaving and it was reading a brisk 14 degrees.
With a fresh inch or so of snow covering the trail through the normally sandy Horseshoe Meadows, staying on the "trail" was tough at times, but after trudging on, we reached the switchbacks and quickly made it up to Cottonwood Pass. Rick pulled out his thermometer from INSIDE his jacket and it was showing near 0 degrees. We all agreed it was easily in the negatives including the wind chill.....brrrr.
We continued on moving to stay warm, only stopping at the junctions for a quick snack. Upon reaching Rock Creek, around 8am, the sun had finally come out, so we found a spot in the sun to take our first real break, maybe 10 minutes or so. I ate half my frozen Subway turkey sub; it still tasted good, although a bit crunchy.
It didn't take long to get cold, so off we went, going over Guyot pass, through Guyot flat and over to Crabtree Meadows. Once we got to the meadow near the Crabtree ranger station, the warm sun was too appealing not to stop and soak it up, so we took another break here. The altitude was finally catching up with me and I knew I had to eat and drink to ward it off.
Onward we went, passing Timberline Lake and up to Guitar Lake. At this point I wasn't feeling good and I told the guys that I was going to have to step it down a notch to control my heart rate in order keep the nausea away. They stayed up ahead of me, breaking trail in the fresh snow up the switchbacks towards Trail Crest. As I was humping my way up, the view towards the West wasn't looking good, there was a storm moving in. I knew I had to keep a steady pace in order to get to Trail Crest before the storm did. After what seem to take forever, I reached the junction below Trail Crest, where Rick was waiting for me. We both continued up to Trail Crest where Richard was hiding behind some rocks to stay out of the wind (We decided that we didn't want to become popsicles, so we aborted a summit attempt).
As we started heading down the switchbacks towards Trail Camp, we noticed the cloud deck was rising up. After a few minutes, it looked like we were heading down into the abyss. A few more switchbacks later, it started to snow. We reached Trail Camp where we ran into Ranger Dave and a hiker name Ryan. Apparently the rest of Ryan's group had summit fever and instead of turning around before the storms closed in, they continued on to the summit. Ranger Dave asked if Ryan could tag along with us back to the Portal while he waited a little longer to see if the group would arrive. We never did hear if the group made it down ok. The rest of the hike back down to the Portal was uneventful, but it was sometimes slow going due to the icy conditions. I must have almost fallen on my arse a half dozen times (I recommend bringing ice axe & crampons for now on).
We finally reached the Portal at 7pm to about 3 inches of fresh snow. We all piled into Richard's car and drove down to Lone Pine for some much needed burgers at the Mt. Whitney restaurant. After dinner we drove back up to Horseshow Meadow in the blustery conditions to retrieve Rick's RAV4. Richard didn't feel comfortable driving back down in his car, so he decided to stay put for the night. Rick's RAV4 has traction control and all that good stuff so we drove back down and up to the Portal where we slept for the night. Richard met us in the morning for a fantastic breakfast at the Portal Store, where we traded stories with Doug. Good times!
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Horseshoe Meadow to Whitney Portal Day Hike - 10.11.08
