Thursday, 7/24/80 - Left Santa Barbara late in the afternoon and arrived around midnight at the Cottonwood Equestrian Campground adjacent to Horseshoe Meadows above Lone Pine.

Friday, 7/25/80 - Early morning start to the Cottonwood Lakes Basin. Easy hike - only about 1,000-foot gain over approximately 5 miles. All above 10,000 feet. Not enough sleep and altitude sickness made for slow day. Forest cover - open to dense - for all but the last couple hundred yards. Camped lakeside at Lower Cottonwood Lake, elevation about 11,000 feet.

Saturday, 7/26/80 - Early morning start to cross New Army Pass. Altitude sickness gone. Passed Long Lake and High Lake, to tree line. Switchbacked to the top of New Army Pass (Elevation 12,320 feet). Descended westward for about 5 or 6 miles, with the first third above treeline and remainder forested canyon. Several beautiful meadows and lakes. Campsite along creek, elevation approximately 9,750 feet).

Sunday, 7/27/80 - Early morning start for the western base of Mt. Whitney. Left forested canyon and headed north. Mostly level at around 10,300 feet  except for one 600 foot ridge we crossed. Vegetation was open forest with bare floor and a lot of visibility. Headed eastward at Crabtree Meadows. Beautiful canyon. The trees give way at around Timberline Lake. The granite rock here is smooth and rounded and arranged in east-west trending groupings. It's almost sculpted and park-like. There are small lovely scenes here that I have recalled many times over the past 3 decades. We continued past Lake Guitar (named for its shape) and set up "camp" on the bare granite slope above the lake (elevation about 11,650). That night we had a full moon. The light reflecting off all the bare granite walls surrounding us was so bright it was possible to easily read in the "dark." About 3:00 a.m. I awoke to see the full moon setting in the west. Beautiful.

• Monday, 7/28/80 - Left at the crack of dawn to go to the top of Mt. Whitney (elevation 14,950 feet). Don't remember a lot about the ascent except it was long and hard. A lot of stopping to rest. We reached the top around noon and probably stayed about an hour. Top-of-the-world view. We headed back along the crest to catch the trail where it heads east across the crest and down the valley to Whitney Portal. I don't recall a lot of the descent at the upper end, although it's quite a drop with many switchbacks. We hadn't had any problem with snow but we reached a point where the trail was blocked and other people were sliding down the mountain rather than trying to negotiate the covered trail. I don't know what we were thinking since we had never been here before and had no idea where we would end up. Nonetheless, we used out sleeping pads as sleds and went off down a long a fairly steep north-facing slope. The rocks under the snow shredded my pad. Somehow, we didn't get hurt and we rejoined the trail below where it descended into the trees.

Some distance further, we met an older woman heading downhill carrying a full pack. She was Hulda Crooks, a Sierra legend, who was 85 at the time. She was making her 18th hike up Whitney in 18 years and this was the first time she had been unable to to reach the top. The snow that had blocked us had blocked her as well. She gave us a pamphlet about herself - she was a Seventh Day Adventist who had not taken up hiking until she was well into her 60s. At this point she had already climbed half the peaks in California above 10,000 feet and had done at least one 200-mile-plus Sierra hike. She gave us a pamphlet about her life that she passed out to hikers on the trail. She died in 1997 at 101. The second spire to the south of the Whitney Summit has been renamed Crooks Peak in her honor. We made it to the Whitney Portal parking lot (elevation about 8,350 feet) while it was still light and one of us bummed a ride back to Horseshoe Meadows to pick up the car. Then it was dinner in Lone Pine and home to Santa Barbara.

Links:

• Map (from someone else who took the same trip)

• Pictures along the trail (from someone else's trip)

Download and install the free version of Google Earth - it's quick and easy

After you've started it up on your computer, it will look something like this:

If it's not already showing, open the SIDEBAR that appears on the left side of the page. If it's not showing, click on the SHOW SIDEBAR icon at the top of the page (just to the left of the YELLOW PUSH-PIN. There are three sections to the SIDEBAR (SEARCH, PLACES and LAYERS). In LAYERS, make sure there is a check mark next to GEOGRAPHIC WEB and TERRAIN. It's best for starting out if none of the other boxes in that section are checked (you can experiment later).

Now, you need to change a few parameters so files I create will appear the same on your computer as on mine.

At the top of the Google Earth (GE) page, click on TOOLS, then OPTIONS. A dialog box opens with 5 tabs at the top. It should already be open on the 3-D VIEW tab. Make sure your settings are as I have them below. When you've done that, click on the APPLY button in the lower right.

Next, click on the TOURING tab. Set all your setting to match those below (for some strange reason, adjusting the settings with the sliders rather than just typing the number in seems to work better). Again, click the APPLY button and then the OK button.

Now, let's save all this so it's set up with these parameters the next time you sign on. To do that, click on FILE at the top of the page, then SAVE, then SAVE MY PLACES.

Last step - click on this link to download the Mt. Whitney file I created. You will asked if you want to Run it or Save it. Click Save and save it to your hard drive in a place where you can find it again. Its name is Mt_Whitney.kml.

Back in Google Earth, click on OPEN and navigate to the place on your hard drive where you saved the file. Click on Mt_Whitney.kml and it will appear in the SIDEBAR under PLACES. What you see should look something like this:

Click on the + sign next to Mt_Whitney.kml to see the contents of the file. You should see something like this:

We're almost ready to fly .... Make sure that all the boxes you see, above, have checks in them. Then, place you mouse over the entry Fly_Whitney (the one with the camera icon to the left of it) and highlight it.

You're ready to launch. Click the TOUR BUTTON (the one in the lower-right corner with the camera icon). Google Earth will fly from whatever it's viewing at the time to the beginning of the Whitney flight. You should see something like this:

The flight will begin moving along the path I've created. You can just sit back and enjoy or you can exercise some control. See that black bar in the lower-left corner? That's the flight control.

The buttons let you reverse direction, pause and re-start, accelrate your speed forward, shows you how long the flight has been underway and lets you stop the flight. I don't know what the button with the two arrows does. The flight control bar disappears while your flying but if you want to access it, just hover your mouse over that section of the screen.

So, why might you want to use the control? Suppose while you're flying, you see something you want to look at more closely. Just hit the pause button and using the navigation controls that appear in the upper right part of your screen when you hover your mouse there, you can explore and then restart the flight by hitting the play button. Also, other Google Earth users have uploaded photographs taken on the ground and linked them to specific locations. If you would like to see what it looks like at ground level, just hit Pause on the flight control bar and then click on one of the little blue squares and a picture will open. Some examples are shown below:

Finally, when you've started the flight, you'll want to close that sidebar on the left side so you have more screen area devoted to what you want to see. Just click on the HIDE SIDEBAR icon at the top of the Google Earth page:

The flight runs just under 42 minutes. It begins at Lone Pine, the town on the Owen's Valley floor below Mt. Whitney, goes through the Alabama Hills (where a lot of old Western movies were made), to Horseshoe Meadows high in the Sierra. I've marked the road in black. The trail we walked is in red with our daily campsites and some other features marked. After descending from Mt. Whitney, the flight follows the Whitney Portal Road before swooping out for an additional look at the Alabama Hills.

After you've finished flying, when you close down Google Earth, you'll be told you have unsaved files in your "Temporary Places" and you'll be asked if you want to save them. Answer Yes and the Whitney flight will be available to you the next time you open Google Earth.

Sorry for all the verbage necessary to get flying but I didn't see a way around it. Enjoy.