From 3100m (-12ºC) to -86m (+24ºC)

Hey!

2 weeks ago during Thanksgiving, we decided to try to climb Mount Whitney (4421m) via the Mountaineer's route. We left the Bay Area early on Thursday morning, and drove to Lone Pine through Yosemite (due to the lack of snow so far, Tioga Pass was still open). We started hiking around 3pm, and reached the first camp (3100m) at sunset. The climb was hard for me. I also had some altitude sickness: a bad headache that would not go away... After a cold night (-12ºC), we decided that it was more reasonable to turn around. While we were going down, we thought we could as well continue all the way to the lowest point in the US ;-) Next stop thus: Death Valley! We camped in the sand dunes after a short walk lit by the full moon. The next morning, the sun gave another perspective on the landscape. We visited the southern part of Death Valley that we had not seen before. We then crossed the state of California from East to West and stopped for the night at San Simeon (a long drive, but Goéric enjoyed our new car and its cruise control system ;-) On Sunday, we drove back on Highway 1. Even if our trip did not go as planned, we had fun!

Marie-Catherine

PS: The pictures feature our new car :-)