Day 46; Mon June 11

(Dr Bug) Woke at 4:45 am. Told STUD it was 5:30 so she would get out of the sleeping bag. It worked great. We were hiking at 5:30 for Mt. Whitney Summit. Started off poorly because we had an arguement about batteries for the camera. The remainder of the hike to the summit was very quiet.

This was a 15 mile round trip. The summit was 14,900 ft. We ascended roughly 3,000 ft from our campsite near Crabtree Meadows Ranger Station. Once you get above the tree line, this area is all rock: split, moved and molded by ice and snow. Rock, rock more rock and only rock. It is spectacular, none the less.
The day was always cold, and very clear. The trail itself was not difficult, but the altitude change made climbing labored. On two occasions I experienced headaches. Drinking water cleared them up.

On the way up we met a JMT hiker named Keith, a film editor from Santa Monica, who was completing a 14 day hike. He ate nothing but Clif bars. Carried them all in his bear canister. He gave us 3 he had left over.

The view from the top was great. There were PCT and day hikers, plus 6 mountain climbers! We reached the summit by 11. We ate lunch, talked to some peole and started down. Reached our camp by 3:30pm. Had dinner, started a fire (our first on the PCT), and talked to a hiker called 'Old Corpus', a 66 year old hiker that hikes much faster than we do - awesome. We were in the sleeping bads by seven tonight. This was the best hike on the PCT so far.