Day 171 - JMT Guitar Lake

Wow, was it cold this morning. After waking up and eating breakfast, we packed up quickly and found this scenic sunspot to warm our bones. We had a short eight mile hike to Guitar Lake today,  the last viable campsite before the five mile hike to the 14,505 foot-high Mount Whitney summit. 

We stopped at this lovely meadow and looked for bears. We only saw deer but were able to enjoy the incredible peace of the far mountain range. Steady hiker traffic, the most of the entire trip, including one group of twelve elder hikers, passed us as we rested, and jumped!

Views of Mount Whitney finally came into view at Timberline Lake, a quaint lake where camping was unfortunately forbidden. We passed a group of twenty Taiwanese hikers. 

The summit of Mount Whitney looked heavily defended when viewed from below. We were going to wake up tomorrow at 230am and hike up to the summit for sunrise-on-the-top-of-the-world*. The thought of this dark task was a bit foreboding. 

We made it to Guitar Lake by lunchtime and looked for an unexposed campsite amid the treeless, 11,500 foot high terrain. We found a great campsite with large boulders on three sides and a foot tall wall of stacked rocks on the fourth side, located just above Guitar Lake at the last water before Whitney. The view of the guitar-shaped lake and the mountain range beyond was epic, truly epic. 

We met three super-cool hikers at Guitar Lake: accountant/climber Sky and programmer/adventurer Meresh from San Francisco and musician Jess from Montana. We passed the lazy afternoon by swimming in the ice cold tarn, journaling, eating as much remaining food as possible to cut weight, and exchanging stories. We ate dinner as a group as the sun went down. 

Jess played his soulful folk music as the sun slowly faded on our last night in the High Sierra. Two other couples came over, hearing the sweet music, and began to dance. 

It was, in a word, perfection.