Dream Achieved! Mt. Whitney Via The Mountaineers Route

Yesterday I got back from climbing the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states. It was a dream of mine since I started climbing. I was even told by some that I MIGHT be ready to climb the Mountaineers Route in 2 or 3 years. Well I don't underestimate myself because of my age and I proved a lot of people wrong yesterday at 10:00 A.M when I topped out on the mountaineers route. I almost cried tears of joy when I saw the summit hut realizing I had accomplished one of my dreams. I went up with my former senior project mentor and now great friend Josh Stricker, and my new friends Peter Styffe, Ben Jones (former record holder for climbing the 50 high points in the USA, solo I might add), and Roy Hartzler. A Great group of guys to say the least. The trip was a ton of fun and I realized how much i've already grown as a climber since my first trip up Mt. Baldy 6 months ago. Anyway now for the good stuff the Trip Report. We left the LA area around noon on monday and got to the Whitney Portal Camp Ground 8,336 ft around 6ish. We made camp, sorted gear, and cooked dinner. I made chicken stir fry with noodlesand veggies. I figured that I wasn't carrying the food so I might as well make a good dinner for my friends and I. Anyway after dinner we met some thru hikers of the PCT (those guys were crazy 75 days on trail!) and talked with them for a good half hour until josh heard something at camp 30ft away. It was a young black bear sniffing at our packs. We sprung into action and started yelling at it. It was young so he got scared and ran away. Paranoid we put our packs in bear lockers and went to bed. We woke up around 6:00 A.M and started on the trail around 7:00 A.M. We weighted our packs at the start and I won with a the heaviest pack at 40lbs flat. And I left a lot at the car. Guess I have to keep moving away from the over prepared boy scout method to the practical alpinist method. The hike was breeze we never got lost and didn't have to bushwack at all. I was a bit worried about tackling the Ebersbacher Ledges where we were either scrambling (class 3) and/or hiking on trail asthin as one boot. But that was the easiest non-straight forward hiking the whole trip. We continued on to LowerBoy Scout Lake where we pumped water and took a break. It was here I though it would be a good idea to start killing my farmers tan inthe end worth it despite the sun burn. After we hiked though a high traverse of a snow field to Upper Boy Scout Lake 11,500 ft but being that it was only one we decided to head to Iceberg Lake 12,500ft. The snow was soft all the way so the hike was easy and there was little post holeing though a well traveled set of tracks, but we reached a steep 30 degree slope that lead to Iceberg lake around 5:00 P.M and decided to make camp off to the side of the trail away up on a snow filed right at the base of Whitney. Camp was chill we spent a lot of time melting snow for water but we had a high efficiency stove and 7oz of fuel so we were totally good. We went to bed at 8:00 knowing we had an early alpine start ahead of us. For the first time in my climbing career we stuck to it and woke up at 2:50 A.M and were climbing at 4:00 A.M. The snow was nice and icy thanks to the early start. Thanks to goodconditions we made it to the end of the snow in the main couloir around 8:00 A.M werewe took crampons off and tackled a easy scramble to the notch (There was WAY more snow on the route than in the picture above). Once at the notch we realized conditions were not ideal. There were large areas of exposed rock at the bottom that were climbable but there was ice all over the rocks. So we decided to some mixed climbing/dry tooling up that section. Ben being the resident expert soloed this section and set up a belay were he belayed us up. I was the first one up after him and climbed a different route were I was using my BD raven ice axe for some fun dry tooling and it helped me get up the section of the route. Did I mention I'venever done any technical climbing like that before or used a belay in a non-gym setting. Anyway we all did it. That section was the right amount of scary and fun. After the rocky section it was as steep 50 degree slope to the top that I would say was a though class 3 or class 4 because of conditions. As soon as I topped out at 10:30 A.M I saw the summit hut and was a bit in shock that I did it. We all walked to the summit were we took pictures ate and took a nice summit nap. At this point we had the summit to our selves not a single other person was there until we woke up form out nap and met some hikers from the main trail and some rock climbers who came up the east buttress. After talking to these climbers we learned that the other team climbing the mountaineers route turned aroundbecause they were post holing up the route due to a late start. So we were the only people to climb the MR that day. We decided to head down a different route so we took the traverse route around the summit. Which was a tad sketchy because the snow was really soft at that point. We had 3 rules have a solid self-belay, solid footing, and dont fall. The traverse was tedious for this reason but we made it back to the start of the notch were it was just a simple scramble and glissade back down to camp. After a few hours of resting at camp and melting water we decided to hike out that night and made it back to the portal in 2.5 hours. We enjoyed burgers that the Whitney Portal Store and headed back home and got back to LA at 1:00 A.M. It was the best trip I've been on and I'm proud to say i've climbed 2 California 14'er and not by the easiest routes at age 17 and after climbing for only 6 months. Now I've got Mt. Shasta and Mt. Rainier on the list and Im super stoked for those trips! Photos are posted under the Photos of Me link above. Also on the route picture above there was A LOT more snow when we did it. And to all my donors and Sponsors you will be receiving your thank you shortly.