June 27th: I woke up in the morning with Mt. Whitney staring me down. Oh, how I wanted to stand on that summit; the highest peak in the lower 48 states at an altitude of 14,505. Despite my excitement to begin climbing I had a small amount of concern. I knew I begin to feel altitude sickness around 9,500ft and the thought of how I would potentially feel 5,000 feet higher than that was draining my excitement a little. I was worried that I was going to get to a certain point up the mountain and not be able to continue because my breathing would become too short....or that I would even black out completely. My plan of attack for the mountain was to simply take it slowly. I climbed the fist mile before I stopped for a moment to eat breakfast. After that I hiked another 2.6 miles to Guitar lake where I had second breakfast. From guitar lake I hiked 1.4 miles to the trail junction of the Whitney portal trail. I had some lunch there and trucked up the remaining 1.9 miles to the summit! It was one hell of a view! By the time I got to the top I was feeling pretty decent. Once I could see the summit I knew I was going to make it and my body started pumping with adrenaline so upon summiting I was buzzing with positive energy. Some of the views I got while climbing up were even more spectacular than the views from the top. I'll probably write more about Whitney at some point but at the moment I'm being distracted by the hiker conversations around me.
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