No matter what I tell you about today, it will be woefully inadequate. I've seen some beautiful scenery and been in some beautiful places in my life, yet I had never seen the kind of majestic and raw power that I saw today. I took photos and video and still couldn't capture it. Of course this all sounds overdone, but I can promise you it isn't.
The day began with a slow, gradual climb along Whitney Creek, which sometimes flowed as a single creek, and other times flowed as multiple veins all coming from the same source. It was very peaceful, especially in the cool of the early morning. The creek flowed from Timberline Lake, which was so amazingly beautiful as it was surrounded by gigantic granitic cliffs that I wanted to build a cabin there. Alas, the sign that said no camping quickly brought me back to reality. I understand why they have to post that sign. If they didn't, there would nearly always be people there. After curling around the small lake and climbing beside Whitney Creek again, I came to Guitar Lake, so named because it is shaped like one.
Imagine an enormous granite bowl with snowcapped edges surrounding a giant meadow with multiple lakes and you'll still be thinking of something smaller and less magnificent than what I viewed today. It was like a symphony--nothing out of place or lacking. It was, in a word, perfect. Peaceful yet threatening. Good but dangerous.
The granite walls surrounding the lakes were literally thousands of feet high. At Guitar Lake after we had already climbed 1,000' in nearly three miles, we were at 11,500'. When we got to the top of Mt. Whitney, we were at 14,491', looking over the top of the granite walls at the hundreds of snowcapped peaks on nearly all sides of us. I couldn't stop taking pictures--color, black-and-white...it didn't matter. I tried to capture everything that I could in the short time we could be there while still making it back to camp at a decent hour.
On the descent, we met lots of hikers still trying to get to the summit that afternoon. The air was thin and affected even the hardiest of climbers. All of the people we met were out of breath--not unlike we had been on our way up. All we could say was, "Just wait...it's worth it." And even if the only way for me to have seen this would have been to have hiked the 767 miles to this point, it would have been worth it.
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