2022 Mt. Whitney Day 1: Jennie Meadows to Ferguson Creek

Mileage:  11.1 miles/17.86 km
Elevation Gain:  1586 ft./483 m

Time:  ~ 9 hours

The call to breakfast was early on our first morning, allowing for individuals to get used to the idea of getting up, getting breakfast, and packing up.  I was up early with The Outdoorsman - I am always unable to sleep well when I hike, be it because of the relative light of moon and dawn, the discomfort of a mattress that never quite seems comfortable, or just because I do not sleep well at night, or perhaps a combination of all three).  We ate our breakfast of bagels, cream cheese, bananas, and coffee as others stirred and slowly got up.

The Outdoorsman and I were two of the first to have our tents down and packs up first - a practice we have picked up from our own training hikes, he by practice and I by his training.  We are always ready to go early, so we waited as others came to get breakfast and then packed up their own tents and gear.

One of the addition to our packs was a bear can, about a 2 foot high, 1 foot in diameter plastic cylinder which is bear resistant and which has our food for the next 8 days.  Each of us would carry one in our pack over the next 7 days.  They started out rather heavy, but grew lighter over time as food was eaten and weight was redistributed.

After finishing breakfast and packing up, the van was locked (to be picked up later by other team members to meet us at the end).  At that point, there as no choice:  we had to go forward.

The hike started with a climb of about 45 minutes or slow, a bit of an uphill grade.  It was not too stiff of a climb, but a good leg stretcher and an idea of what we would begin to see as we continued on our trail.  The sky was blue, and the sun bright but not oppressively hot (the change in temperature was a welcome break from the heat of Summer).  We continued up to a pass through granite and pine, similar to what The Outdoorsman and I had experienced in our own hikes, then a slight descent to our lunch spot (below):

Lunch was a tortilla filled with Asian Slaw and cut up fried chicken (marvelous things tortillas; good for any number of camping meals and packing much more flat than bread).  We sat and ate and marveled at the view.

The afternoon was largely spent in a descent to our camping spot that evening.  This descent was on a trail that involved a lot of dirt and sand on the trail - besides being much warmer (with the sand reflecting the sun up), it pointed out one big gap in my hiking footwear:  mesh shoes, while good for many things, are not very good at all for keeping things like sand and dirt out.  My feet began to feel gritty immediately, which would be a refrain that followed me for the rest of the hike.

By later afternoon we continued to drop until about 4 PM or so we arrived at our campsite for the night, Ferguson Creek. We all began what would become a standard practice at every trail's end:  Our guides would start by getting water ready for filtering and use, and we would spread out, looking for campsites, after which the assembly of the tent and arrangement of gear would take place.  I would become more proficient at this as time went on, getting to site readiness within 15 or 20 minutes.

The Creek was wonderful:  cold and clear.  In a first on this trip, I had purchased a pair of camp shoes (generally sandals, "Crocs", or secondary shoes that one wears in camp to give one's feet a break from the hiking shoes) - in this case a pair of plastic sandals.  I put my feet in the creek - amazing!  It was such a relief to be able to scrub the dirt from them and just let them rest in the water for a time.

(In a now-amusing subplot, I took off my glasses to wash my face and placed them on the rock beside me.  I failed to realize that I had left them there until about 20 minutes later when I went to look at pictures on my phone and could not really focus.  There were a few minutes of panic until I retraced my steps and there they were, right where I had left them.)

We were able to have a fire for the evening (fires were allowed below 10,500 ft.), and so ate our Chicken Noodle Soup and Pesto Pasta around the fire.  I do not know why food tastes better when one hikes, but it certainly seems to.  We watched the fire, tentatively exploring each other a little more.

At the close to the evening, we have to list "Roses and Thorns" - things that went well and things that perhaps did not.  I, of course, simply list that today, I did not die.

The creek made a wonderful backdrop of white noise as we drifted off to sleep.