June 19

End: Crabtree Ranger Station
Daily: 16.7
Total: 766.3

We're camped out here, 1.2 miles off trail, to set ourselves up for climbing Mt. Whitney tomorrow. At 14,500 feet, it's the highest point in the lower 48 states. Today someone got airlifted off, because of nerves or altitude sickness, we don't know. Hopefully everything will go okay for us.

Today was gorgeous!! It was on-off snow all day, but the steep ups were snow-free. It was our first morning on snow, which made us both appreciate the snow a little more. It's still hard in the morning, and if we keep our microspikes on, it's almost like walking on trail, but you can go wherever you want.

There were views of snow covered, jagged peaks in the distance, towering granite cliff,s and meadows all over.

We had to do our first dangerous creek fords today. They were pretty scary. It felt like anything not in contact with the ground was being pulled sideways by gravity. Or something. We all made it, a little colder and wetter than we started. But it was hot today, so the water felt nice.

Before we got into Crabtree meadows, there was a huge snow field that should have had switchbacks on it, Instead, we glisaded down. I love glisading.

When we got to camp, Boots pulled out his fly rod and caught us 5 golden trout. There were tiny and beautiful. We  cooked them in foil with fresh garlic, onions, olive oil and salt, which Bandit and Sprinkles were generous enough to loan out to us.

I can't believe today really happened.