Where's Walla: 7 YR Anniversary Trip

Every year for our anniversary we have tried to take a trip. Eden's very first night camping was actually on our 4 year anniversary up at Rock Creek when she was 6wks old. We were sort of on our anniversary trip 2 yrs ago when we decided to head home a couple days early so that we could go to the movies or dinner or something on the actual day when I shattered my ankle and ended up in surgery on the actual day of our 5 yr anniversary. And last year we got the best anniversary present of all - our baby Zi had arrived and we were settling in at home with him.

This year we decided to try for another adventure just the two of us. We decided to try to hike Mt Whitney in a day. Most may not know this about me but I despise hiking. Disdain it with a passion. Ever since I began rock climbing hiking has always been the approach and nothing more. The miserable slog - a means to an end. But after hiking in the Sierras with the kids I started to think it might be nice to go on an all day hike just Jon and I. To just mindlessly put one foot in front of the other, enjoying the scenery, the silence, and each others company. Jon and I have always talked about hiking Mt Whitney so that's how the idea was born. Turns out that hiking 22 miles in a single day with 6,000 feet of elevation gain was a lot more challenging than either of us anticipated. In the end I had a renewed disdain for hiking, vowing I would never be interested in anything like it ever again, but now that we are home and our muscles are healing, and I feel that I will indeed be able to walk without pain again in my life, I am wondering when we can try it again.

ALABAMA HILLS

We arrived in Lone Pine late Saturday afternoon and were able to get 7 pitches of climbing in. It was really nice to climb actual rock and to be able to do it safely and freely without the stress of having to worry about keeping the kids safe as well. But last time we were at this spot was with the kids and we could not get them out of our heads. Everything was too quiet and we were a bit lonely without them.

View of Mt Whitney from the visitors center.

Jon put the mile markers on his phone so we would know where we were at various points. His phone died before we stepped foot on the trail which was actually a God-send. Had we known what little progress we were making we probably would not have continued on.

The night before we camped in the back of the suburu. It was awesome and so easy!

Getting started at 2am. Bright eyed - not so bright eyed by the time we got back.

Crossing bridges like this and rocks in the stream was challenging in the dark and on little sleep. I had a wet left foot for the majority of the hike.

It was surreal hiking in the dark, under the stars and the moon. I saw the best shooting star I have seen in years at the beginning of the hike. The sun did not come up for 4 hours. Once it did it put on quite a show on the surrounding rock walls.

I love the look of this wall. It was kind of breaking my heart to be up there surrounded by such beautiful granite and not climbing it.

Jon was in his element. He probably could have hiked up and back down again in the same 24hr period.

Before we left Jon kept telling me what the high and low temperatures were gonna be. I remember thinking that the low temperatures would not be relevant as we would likely be summiting during the high temp. I could not have been more wrong. We were enjoying every bit of the 32 degree low all the way to the summit.