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| Remember a few photos ago when I stated it was
at Guitar Lake that the saying, "age and treachery beats youth and exuberance."
Well, this is Guitar Lake taken from about 1000 ft up on the trail to Mt.
Whitney. The time is about 7AM... some two hours after Marshall and
I got on the trail to the summit. Now the rest of the group is just
starting the trek. The treachery part was that we didn't TELL anyone
we were going to lite out at 5AM. We had arranged everything for
quick exit the night before. Breakfast was already laid out in the
tent. We ate, broke camp, and got on the trail in 30 minutes... near
world record time. The others told us later that they heard us
wrestling around getting ready to escape, but didn't have the energy to
follow suit. After all, it was 22 degree outside the tents and the
sun would be blocked for hours from warming things up. The 14,000
ft. eastward mountain range insured it would be cold until late morning.
In any case, Marshall and I were nearly 3/4ths of the way to Trail Crest (13,600 ft) when the others strapped on their packs. ...And as it turned out, we would need almost all of the lead time. Some of the swifter members of the assault team must have decided to kill themselves motoring up after us. Everyone arrived at Whitney peak within 45 minutes of the flying Stowell brothers, some within 15 minutes. |