Hiking the tallest mountain in the continental United States....that's right & in the snow MT. WHITNEY at 14,496 feet

When Josh was growing up in his family they would go on a hike when each child turned 10. Well, one year the family came to hike Mt. Whitney and on the way Josh's ear drums began to bleed and ruptured. Needless to say OUCH. So he stayed at the campsite and waited for everyone else to climb Mt. Whitney. Ever since we've been married Josh has always talked about going back and "beating" the mountain. So we were finally able to go and beat Mt. Whitney together as a couple. We loved being able to do this and achieve this together. To quote Josh it was the most scary, exhilarating, and exciting thing that we've ever done. Usually the best time to hike Mt. Whitney would be in the summer months of late July and August. It is EXTREMELY hard to get a permit to hike Mt. Whitney. Our permit was picked amazing as that is, and we were so LUCKY to be able to hike in to the campsite May 31st and out June 1st, so with record snow fall we were in for a HUGE treat. We loved our adventure.

Jennifer & Josh so excited to start on this new & exciting journey to hike Mt. Whitney.

Check out these icicles just to give you an idea they were about as tall as Jennifer. Pretty sure we don't want to be around when those fall.

Jennifer at Mirror lake pointing at the summit, we've come far but have so much further to go.

Consultation Lake frozen over

Jennifer is pointing at the snow covered 90% grade that we got to scale.

So once we arrived in camp there were only 3 other tents. We found a group of rocks that was perfect. So we got a nice flat spot set up tent, then Josh said you know if I was a marmot (the only animal that is up there really nasty looking thing and they aren't afraid of humans) I would live in between those two rocks (which were near our tent). Sure enough about 2 minutes later a huge marmot comes out and starts to go for our backpack. Josh starts throwing rocks at it and the marmot gives Josh a look like I'm going to attack you. So we thought the marmot left, well it came around to the other side going for our snacks, that was it, Josh grabbed our tent and other things and we went out to a rock that was flat by itself and surrounded by snow. We weren't bothered at all. It worked out a lot better.

Yep, that's the mountain we get to climb. Little did we know that it would take 2 hours to scale. We will go to the left where there is a gap. Once we reached the top we went along the backside of the rocks that are on the right side. (Hopefully that makes sense.)

Josh showing off all of our gear that we use to climb this big mountain. Crampons on the shoes, ice ax to climb, rope so that his sweetheart doesn't fall or hurt herself.

Just to give you an idea this is the mountain that we climbed. It was about 1500 feet incline that we conquered going straight up. While climbing up this mountain we relied heavily on our ice axes (good thing for youtube for teaching us how to use them).

Here is Jennifer with the sign saying that we are at 13,600 elevation. Behind Jennifer is where the trail normally is as you can see it is covered in snow.

If you look closely you can see the trail and how narrow it really was. One slip and you could fall off the mountain. Josh & I had a rope and were tied to each other.....just in case.......

Here you can see how packed with snow the trail really was. A lot of the trail we were only able to put one foot in front of the other. Good thing we had crampons and our ice ax.

Frozen over Guitar Lake

Jennifer & the hut that is at the summit. We are almost there so excited to finally make it.

Josh & Jennifer on top of Mt. Whitney

Jennifer feeling on top of the world enjoying the view and beauty from being so high up.

Josh & Jennifer on top of Mt. Whitney. Elevation 14,496 feet, tallest place in the continental United States.

Here we are ready to slide (glissade) down the mountain.

Here is the mountain that we slid down. That was actually pretty fun. I kept telling Josh how I wished I had my snowboard that would be fun to ride down that mountain, too bad I wasn't able to attach it to my backpack. So there was a guy who got sick from altitude sickness and he actually never made it to the summit. It was pretty sad he was only about half a mile from the summit. But when you're sick you're sick. Well, we were about 30-45 minutes ahead of him, it took us about 20 minutes to slide down the mountain and we turned around and here comes this guy tumbling down, lost his ice ax in the process he said that it was 3:25 when he was at the top and now it was 3:27. He goes on to tell us how it was the scariest thing he'd ever done he was sure lucky to be alive. Crazy....

WE MADE IT!!!! It was a wonderful feeling coming down the last couple of switchbacks and seeing mom walking up the trail to greet us. Then to get to the last switchback and be able to hear dad & Risa cheering us on brought tears to our eyes. We were so EXCITED that they came to CHEER us on we can't thank them enough.

Jenn, Risa & Josh standing in front of the Mt. Whitney sign so HAPPY to be alive & one of the few people to say that we were able to SUMMIT MT. WHITNEY in the snow. It was awesome we LOVED it.