Conquer My World. Check.

I had just finished telling Gavin about my triathlon training class and how I don't know if I will be able to do a tri because my knees are bad and I can't run.

He said "So you probably don't hike much."

"No, not at all. That's just as bad as running."

"Well shoot, I was going to see if you wanted to come with some of us on a hike next weekend. We have an extra permit."

Curious to know what hike they were doing that required a permit I asked "Where are you going?"

"Mount Whitney...actually."

Seriously, what were the chances that he would say that. I had never met anyone who had hiked Mt. Whitney, and frankly I knew nothing about the hike or the mountain. All I knew is that about two years ago I started making a list of 150 things I want to do before I die and the very first thing, as cheesy as it sounds, is to visit all cities, landmarks, or notable places having to do with 'Whitney.' I thought it would be a good way to see or do a wide variety of somewhat random things. The list had been very neglected over the past year and I had pretty much forgotten about until a few days prior to this conversation when I came across it on my jump drive.

I was SO TORN!! I really didn't know if I could do the hike with my knees, but then again, they wouldn't be getting any better. I kept thinking back to two winters ago when my friend AJ called me on his way to Wasatch Powder Birds to go Heli skiing. His Dad's buddy was sick as a dog and they needed someone to fill-in, all paid for and everything. I said no because I had to write a paper. I realized after that, that missing a day of work or a not so great grade on a paper doesn't affect you in the long run....at all. Lindzi told me that I HAD to do it, and probaby made some threat like she would "kick me where it hurt" if I didn't. So despite my hesitations I decided to go.

Well it turns out the Mt. Whitney is the highest peak in the lower 48 states measuring-up at 14,505 feet (used to be 14,496, it's growing I guess) and 22 miles long round-trip. Considering people typically train to go on that sort of hike and I literally hadn't hiked in two years, I was REALLY nervous.

We left at 6:00am on Thursday the 4th and drove for about 11 hours through the exciting Nevada deseret. We picked-up our permits and everything, set up our tents, packed our packs for the morning and went to sleep. At 3:30am we woke-up took down camp, packed everything in the cars and drived the 15 minutes to the trail head. We started hiking at 5:00am. Hiking in the dark was actually nice to start with, but it got light pretty quick. The sunrise was beautiful. The rock is granite, but it's more green or yellowish than the granite in Utah. The first lake we came to was about 3 miles up the trail and called Lone Pine Lake. It was so spectacular. It's just nestled in the mountain side and the reflection of the mountains on it was gorgeous.

We were really lucky with the weather. I don't think it could have been better. No clouds, but not hot either.

After about four or five hours of hiking, we stopped at Crater Lake for a break and some fuel. By the time we got to this lake there was no more vegitation, which also means no bathroom break coverage. You have to pack EVERYTHING out with you, even #2. They give you these nice little things called WAG Bags to do that. Luckily I never had to rip it open.

For about 2 and a half hours after lunch I hiked by myself. We all just went at our own pace. This was the section up 97 rocky switchbacks. I put turned my iPod on and literally looked at the ground for an hour. When I finally looked up and looked at what I had just come up I felt pretty good about myself. Then I turned around to see how much further I had and I felt sick. I wasn't even halfway up the switchbacks.

At the top of the switcbacks you get to Trail Crest. It is at the summit of 'a' mountain and the elevation is 13,600 feet. It is also where Inyo National Forest and Sequoia National Forest meet. When I got to this point I felt great, and there was only 900 more feet vertically and just over 2 miles to go.

From this point on Gavin and I stuck together. We thougt it would probably be about an hour to the summit from there. It ended up taking us almost 3 hours. We both started getting light headed and headaches and the trail was terrible!!! It was basically a gigantic bolder field. It was unbelievable how hard the hike became all of the sudden. We talked to a few people on their way down who said they got altitude sickness and couldn't make it to the peak. They were between ONE to a HALF mile from the peak! We were determined to make it, so we went really slow.

After about 8 or 9 hours of hiking, we made it to the summit!! I immediately felt better. It was so exciting to be up there for the view and the simple amazement that I had done it!!!

I pulled out my phone because I wanted to take some pictures with that too. Amazingly, I had service. I sent a few people a picture message and was kind of chatting with a climber who had just come up the face of the mountain. He asked if he could possibly borrown my phone to make a call. He called his wife and home and was so thankful because it won him some serious brownie points since he had left his wife at home with their four kids for a week.

When we left the peak, I pulled out my grandma's hiking sticks she let me borrow. They helped so much on the down hill!! But still it was hard.....actually more painful. My knees started hurting pretty bad within the first hour. Coming back across the boulder field was the hottest part of the day and I was almost out of water. We went down the switchbacks as fast as we could and got to the bottom of the probably around 7:00 o'clock. Most people will camp at Base camp which is at the bottom of the switchbacks, but we had decided that we didn't want to carry such big pack so we were doing it all in one day. I was kind of jealous as we walked past camp. Everyone was sitting around little stoves making dinner and relaxing, and we still had 5 miles to descend. It got dark around 8:00, which was no big deal because we had hiked in the dark in the morning and the trail is really easy to follow down low. But after hiking a couple hours in the dark and my knees were hurting like crazy, I was seriously DONE. It felt like it was never going to end, and since it was dark when we had hiked up this portion of the trail, we really had no idea if it was 20 minutes or 2 hours to the bottom.

When I was at the very, very, very end of my sanity, we could see car brake lights. We came around one more corner, and were finally there!!!!! I was SOOOOOOO happy.

The hike was 22 miles round trip and took us from 5:00 am to 11:00 pm, 18 hours total.

We drove out of the canyon, found an empty camp sight and went right to sleep, not bothering to put a tent up.

Gavin wanted to get up early to leave so he could get to the Ute game. Sun was just rising when we woke-up and it was so beautiful.

The aftermath of the hike seemed not bad at first. I got a sunburn on my left arm, and my calves hurt, but my knees actually weren't bad. It's been a week since I got home now, and my knees hurt so bad I can't walk...but I can swim and ride a bike, i dunno. I think I should go to the doctor. If anyone wants to diagnose me, it's the outsides of my knees that hurt, it's like I can't bend them when I walk.

This was really, really too long, but honestly I feel like it might be one of my greates accomplishments. It feels so good to cross it off my list and gives me motivation to work on the next one. It's probably going to be skydiving, a long trip to South America (anyone want to come), or a triathlon next spring.