Day 44 6/28 4 PCT miles, 17 side trail miles

We woke to another chilly morning, partially frozen water bottles again. After eating breakfast we packed only the food, water, clothing, and a couple other miscellaneous items we needed to get up Mt. Whitney and back down into my pack. The rest of the gear and food went into Carly 's pack which we left in a steel bear locker while we did the climb.

The top of Mt. Whitney was about 8 miles from camp so was great to be able to leave most of our gear at the bottom of the mountain.  We started the day at 10,700 feet. After about 3 miles of climbing we ran into two thru-hikers from years 2010 and 2008 who had slept in a little hut on top last night! They said that during their hikes, which were about at the same time of year, this whole area was covered in snow and some of the creeks we rock hopped across were waist deep fords. The low snow year in the siearras made this section much easier for us.

The walk up was extremely scenic, as we got higher the views just kept getting better. About 2 miles from the top we met up with a trail that came up from a road on the otherside of the mountain, from then on there were tons of hikers on the path. When u get up to the top one side of the mountain drops off a couple thousand feet, we found a good spot overlooking the big drop off and had lunch. There were probably about 30-40 people on the summit the entire hour we were up top. There were fighter jets flying over the mountain all day,it seemed that they were always flying high over head, but when we were on the summit two jets buzzed the top it seemed like they were only a few hundred feet above the summit.

Also on the way up we met a guy who was training for a 130mile run in the Himalayas, at 18,000 feet. We told him he was crazy. His girlfriend was behind him talking to someone else and apparently she was the first american woman to ever complete the race!
On the way down we met a few other thru-hikers we have been hanging around with who were just heading up and hoping to catch a sunset.

We got back to where we stashed our gear and then did about 4 more miles along the PCT and camped next to a creek for the night.

Today was porobably my favorite day of the trip so far, it was awesome to go up the highest peak in the lower 48 with a super light back pack. The views today were also unlike anything we've seen thus far. It was a great day of hiking!