Super stoked to cross Whitney off the list! Couldn't have asked for a more gorgeous day.
- Strava goofed the distance. It should be around 22 miles.
- Weather was perfect 🙌
- We started at 3am. This might be okay for fast hikers or trail runners. For most people who want to finish before sundown, I think 12-2am is better.
- The overnight backpack option (or running it with a 5L vest) now seems more appealing to me.
- Starting pack weight: 30 lbs. Finishing pack weight: 22 lbs. Didn't need to bring so much water. Those alpine lakes are crispy af.
- Need to experiment with how much risk and discomfort I'm willing to accept to go lighter. I could've dropped my first aid kit, rain jacket, extra clothes, stove, and 2/3 of my food and water.
- Incredible views but also many hours of humdrum hiking in the dark.
- The amount of snow today was not worth microspikes.
- Apple Watch isn't the right device for this. Had to keep charging it throughout and even stopped more than we needed to just so I could charge my watch for a few minutes at a time and not have the recoding be cut off.
- I'm skeptical of heart rate data because there were times when I was breathing hard, expecting 160 bpm, and the watch read 130 bpm.
- 3h20m FKT is unreal. Wtf??
- Considering how little I prepared (no elevation training and drove up 8 hours before hiking), this went extremely well. I was lucky to not have any high altitude sickness besides HAFE 💨 but the altitude absolutely had an effect. A lot of these splits are hilariously slow 😂