I am 56 years,new to hiking, and my total experience consists of 3 visits to Whitney in 2016. The rules i set for myself and anyone that i hike with are 1. Never hike in snow 2. Never hike at night. Maybe dawn when there are other hikers in front. 3. Gear in the middle of summer i had plenty of rain gear and warm down. I had way more gear than i needed but there was no way i was going to get stuck up on that mountain overnight without gear. Compass, lights food first aid rope etc etc 4. Turn around times for summit no exceptions 5. Turn around mandatory at 1st sign of storms. 6. I had the entire trail memorized from hours and hours of watching video. 7. I spent months reading these blogs and months training. 8. I spent months reading about AMS and the 1st visit turned around at trail camp due to lack of acclimatization and wrong type of training.
This mountain is one of the most difficult things i ever did and that includes marathons.
On our 2nd visit the whole time we were there the SAR chopper was flying around and the poor gentleman they were looking for did not make it.
We got a late start on day one of trip 2 and bumped into SAR rangers coming down the short cut route. The one ranger said that the problem is that when people want to summit bad enough that they summit badly. Its a play on words. A kind of sick SAR joke but often tragically not funny.
