I decided to do the mountaineer's route to summit Mt Whitney last week and found it to be a little more technical than I had anticipated but overall, the hike went really well. I went with a few friends from work who had climbed it before but not too many miles into the hike I had to go the rest of the way alone. They were not quite going fast enough to make it up and down in one day and I had to be on call the next day (they were planning on staying the night).

This first picture is of lower Boy Scout lake that is just above the portion of the hike know as the ledges. It is a group of ledges that winds up the side of the mountain, a difficult trail to follow in the dark and we lost it several times. Quite a bit of time was lost on trail finding up those ledges to the lake. We ended up on the wrong side of the lake and started up the saddle on the opposite side of where we should have been and had to bush wack our way back to the trail.
Above lower Boy Scout lake was this water way that came down from Upper Boy Scout lake. This was a very nice part of the hike because the trail just wound around the little water falls every where. It was very scenic.

I wish I would have taken a picture of upper Boy Scout lake but I didn't. I left the main group at upper Boy Scout and went alone from there on out. This picture was taken in the valley above upper Boy Scout lake facing the mountain. The two peaks on the left are known as the needles and the bigger peak on the right is Mt. Whitney. At this point I was wondering how I was supposed to summit the mountain because it was not clear at the time. I knew that I had to stay right and try to get up to the notch that took you around the back of the summit. I just continued to walk in hopes that I would see some other people on the same route.
This was taken in that same valley from before, still no clear route to the top.
I did finally see some people who had camped at Iceberg Lake the night before that were heading to the summit and we headed to the notch together. We had a few wrong turns and had to do some serious down climbing but it worked out just fine.
Yes! Made it to the top of the notch and I was most of the way there at this point. There was just one more technical climb and another 3-400 feet to the top.
This is looking down at the last climb to the summit. It doesnt look to bad, but when you are not sure where you are going it complicates things a little bit. Also, if you look in the middle of this picture towards the bottom of this cut there is a 10-12 foot wall that you need to climb to get up to this boulder field and scramble to the top. Unfortunately there was still ice on the wall on this climb that had to be avoided any way that you could and still make your way to the top. At the bottom of this is a small ledge and then another 800-1000 foot drop, so dont fall here.
Finally, after that last climb the summit comes into view. It is a nice flat area with a lot of comfortable boulders to sit on and take a rest. I started hiking at about 230am and reached the summit at about 1030am. It was longer than I had hoped but the trail finding killed me, next time it will be much faster. The whole thing took about 12-13hours of hiking.
Belize and Rio always want to come with me, but since they cant Belize likes me to take a figurine for her and one for Rio with me. She says it is so I wont forget them while I am hiking and it is pretty cute.
This is one last view of the top. The rest of my group did not end up being able to summit. One of the fell and hurt his leg and a couple people in their group needed some rope assist to get down. They didn't get off the mountain until early Sunday morning. It was a fun experience and I am looking forward to doing this stuff with the kids when they are a little older.