Hey Y'allThis last weekend (Oct 16 and 17) a group of coworkers and friends hiked Mt. Whitney attempting to summit the highest peak in the continental United States. (See wikipedia page for Whitney's stats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Whitney) Earlier in the week California was pounded with some early winter storms and the Sierra Neveda mountains got an earlier start building its winter snow pack. The snow the storm left made for slow hiking conditions most of the trip. Long story short, we got a late start for the summit Saturday because we waited for the slower member of our group that didn't make it to camp Friday night to catch up. They never caught up, and later we found out they didn't try. We made it to trail crest (13,600ft elev) at about noon. After some lunch we decided not to attempt the summit because we were unsure of conditions along the last 2 miles of the trail and hiking thus far was much slow than expected. We would be fighting daylight if we made an attempt for the summit and thoughts of pizza and beer at the pizza factory helped reinforce our decision to turn around. THE END.
