If you haven’t hiked to the highest point in the Lower 48, WildeBeat tells you how to get there.
When I first started hiking I figured I had to do Mount Whitney. After all, there is a trail right to the top, you don’t need ropes or climbing partners. A marathoner I work with told me it wasn’t especially difficult. Most of the PCT and JMT hikers climb it. So, it’s very doable. But: it’s been done. By oodles (20,000 a year, WildeBeat says). My inner hipster wannabe tells me anything that popular must have, like, something wrong with it. (If you listen to your inner hipster wannabe you will consume lots of inpenetrable literature and enjoy unlistenable music, and after all that effort you won’t have much ambition left for such follies as hiking to the tops of mountains. I will say, in defense of authentic hipsters, that Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder — beat poet royalty — did a fair amount of mountain climbing. So being cool does not preclude being outdoorsy. )
One of the main points my guest makes is that there are better ways to climb it than a frontal assault on the main trail. (Come to think of it, that applies to a lot of things in life!)
As for what’s wrong with it, listen to next week’s edition. 😉