I did Whitney June 27-29, summiting on the 28th. It was my 7th time up Whitney in 7 years, and my 5th summit; but for two of the other 4 in my party it was the first time, and for one in particular a very memorable experience indeed!
The hike itself went well; all 5 made it to the summit. But on the way down, about a mile from the junction with the Muir trail, one of the ladies in my group (57 years old) missed a step up onto a rock and came down on her shin right on the edge of the rock. She made some pain-induced comment and rubbed her shin through her thick pants…then, seeing blood coming through the material, she pulled up the leg to see how bad it was. In the middle of her shin was a 2-inch wide tear, opened about an inch, all the way to the bone.
Now we were 4 miles above high camp and 10 miles from the trailhead, so I was darned glad that she didn’t freek out, because it would have been a major effort to carry her down. I have to admit I had a moment of squeamish panic too, but as the hike leader I had to suck it in on the spot and do what had to be done. We washed it off with some of our drinking water, put half a tube of antibiotic on it, and wrapped it with gauze and tape from my first aid kit.
After resting a few minutes, he was able to hike all the way back to high camp without trouble. But we knew she needed medical care, so we had to pack up camp and hike all the way out instead of spending another night on the trail. She carried her own pack all the way out, and was convinced she’d be fine without seeing a doctor, but we insisted, and at about 10 pm took her to the hospital in Lone Pine.
It took 2 hours for them to clean out the wound and sew it up; it had been 10 hours since the injury, and some of the tissue had started to die and had to be removed. The doctor told her that in general one has about 6 hours to get a wound like that repaired, otherwise the tissues start deteriorating rapidly. They say she’ll need some plastic surgery in about a year to finish closing up the hole, but it would have been a lot worse if she had waited longer.
This lady certainly deserves a lot of credit for holding it together at 13,800 feet with living bone showing. She was in good spirits all the way down the trail and afterwards, in spite of the pain, and fortunately didn’t let the bad parts spoil the good experience of her first trip to Whitney. But I hope sharing the experience here will help others to remember that no matter how many people you might see on the Whitney trail, and no matter how many tell you it's "easy", one slip of the boot can potentially result in a serious situation!
p.s. Yes, I know "freek" is spelled wrong, but it gets filtered out if I spell it "*****"!
