Day 13: Twindall Creek to Guitar Lakes- 12 Miles

Felt good in the morning, thought my worries were over. We hiked over to Wallace Creek where we met Buck and Annie, a father and daughter duo. They had been stopped for a few days because Annie had a really intense case of food poisoning and was unable to move. I feel like I dodged a bullet with my digestive problems, that girl was truly sick. Luckily an emergency room doctor happened to be hiking the JMT and had given them some stronger medicine that had cleared up her problems. Good thing, because we met a ranger a bit later down the trail who said that they had a helicopter ready to come take her out if her symptoms didn't subside by the end of the day. Even here, so close to the end of the JMT, it's still a day or two to hike out. We slowly hiked up to Guitar Lakes and set up camp by 2 pm.

Pretty desolate and cold. So cold.

Guitar Lakes is above the tree line so there is no cover. It's also around 11,500 ft, which makes it the highest elevation that we camped at. This also means it's pretty cold, and the wind that comes down off Whitney is freezing. I felt drained and weak all day, I don't have any electrolytes and we are saving the last of the gatorade for tomorrow when we hike up Mt. Whitney.

Nick hiding from the wind 

A huge energy and morale boost is that we can finally see Whitney between the broken clouds. The weather is overcast and ominous, with dark storm clouds looming in pretty much every direction. The ranger said the forecast was 60% chance of rain tonight and 70% tomorrow. Our plan is to do Whitney tomorrow morning when the weather is better, but this storm could ruin that. Sitting in the tent now, it started snowing on us around 7pm and hasn't stopped since.

A second wave of symptoms for me kicked in near the end of the day.The tent is slowly dripping on me and my stomach hurts but whatever. Even if we can't summit Whitney tomorrow we will hike out. We ate our last dinner tonight and have one more breakfast and lunch so we better make it.