Myself and a partner did Whitney for the first time last year and completed the day hike in about 14:45 with a 0400 start time. He runs several times a week and I play soccer twice a week and we both did the 3 Saints in So Cal as training. I had some problems with AMS after making the summit, mostly dizziness and headache and nausea. Fortunately I was already coming down and so wasn't battling with the thought of if I should continue up.

When I tried this year with a bigger group, two in our group started around 0115 and the rest of us at 0345. But I had either residual illness from the week before or post concussion syndrome from a knock to the head, and I was struggling from the second mile. We all had radios, so after 4 miles of me holding back the pace, I let the other two go on without me. My trick of taking ibuprofen to feel better wasn't working because this wasn't actually AMS. I almost made it to mile 8 but with two large breaks to recover, and just as I was telling myself I probably wasn't going to make the summit (about an hour behind the two that started with me), black clouds rolled over the ridge along with thunder, so I saw that as my sign that I would *definitely* not make it, and turned around.

Summit fever is a very real thing and it takes a strong will or a good friend to keep you from doing something stupid. I had already made it once so you figure, what's the rush to do it again? But last year we had snow and clouds on the summit and I didn't get any of those great pictures from the peak. This year the weather started out beautiful and the rest of my group all got great photos at the top, but we ended up with thunder before 1045. I was disappointed, but came home alive, for which my wife was happy :-)