Mt. Whitney Trip --1st day in the mountain--

To The Summit (Mt. Whitney Trip)

□■□■　Mt. Whitney ■□ August　16th,　The first day in the mountain
Whitney Portal - Trail Camp

　The schedule was 3 days round trip. Today's destination was Trail Camp (3600m). The starting point is already over 2500m. The weather seemed perfect.

　There was a measure at the entrance. My backpack was about 23kg (shown by ponds).

　After about one hour climb through first switchback, I got visual. White ridge is not snow but rock. One hang glider was seen in the sky.

　Lone Pine Lake stays in quiet atmosphere, little bit distant from the trail. Forest limit is near there.

"Mount Whitney Zone"

" Special permit required all hikers. day and overnight"

　Before I came here, I met Korean family who asked me where the permit line was. They went back when they saw it.

　There is a lake at Trail Camp. I got there before 15pm.

　Though it was a scheduled pace in terms of time, I became to got headache after the time I had lunch.... I didn't have any trouble in my body except for headache. But the headache continued to agonize me. No fun with the pain...

　The camping site is beside the lake. There was enough room to camp on the gravel ground.

　I could got water from a stream pouring into the lake. I drank the water directly although other campers put chlorine into the water to sterilize. I felt headache by the way...

camping at the highest location in my life!

　Squirrels came out and bit the plastic bag rice inside when I took my eyes off briefly. American wild animals are sly. I think Japanese animals and human are shy.

　There was a toilet at the campground. I didn't expect that because the visitor center gave me a small pack to bring back human waste (Pack-Out). An instruction was on the wall (showed in the picture below).

　This toilet has capacity. It is closed when the waste accumulates more than the amount degradable in one year. The instruction says that you should not dump anything. (The right picture enlarges by clicking it.)

　The distributed Pack-Out was not just a normal plastic bag, but it had a deodorant which made a gel by adding water. I didn't use it in the trip and brought it back home. Now I keep it unused as a memory.

　I ate sufficient dinner and hopped in my sleeping bag early because headache kept agonizing me. After the trip, I knew the truth eating much caused worse headache. The altitude sick causing headache is luck of ogen in a brain. Eating food also needs oxygen to digest it and deprive oxgen from a brain and headache becomes worse. I woke up midnight because of the pain after all.

（Updated；8/18/2024）

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