Steve, EXCELLENT!
That is a real service to the community. Like Harvey, I was surprised by the route.
I'm guessing that if you stayed lower, it would be even easier, but you stayed high, which is always my inclination (and I HATE to climb down something I've climbed up!)
The huffing and puffing gives it a realistic quality. Glad you added that special effect in!
De nada, Ken. 'twas a pleasure.
Re: staying lower... I pretty much followed the existing use path. At one point, the path divereged, and I took the upper one. As you can see, I moved back to the lower one to continue on.
Look at my
route on Spotwalla. (First select "All" on the left for "% Fill" then click "Go".) Then, zoom in on the Whitney part, switch to "satellite" and zoom in more (Spotwalla is really cool!), you can see my waypoint signals from the SPOT, even the place I moved lower. You can also then see the use paths and the main trail. Zoom out two clicks, and you can see that the use path stays at the top of a band of broken rock. Going lower wouldn't make much difference--until you get below the band where it is again treacherously steep. Going higher would get into steeper stuff, similar to the Final 400.
That rock slide from several years ago likely started near the crest at the top of one of those steeper chutes.
