With the goal of doing the East Arete of Mt Russell, Ben S and I managed to snag 2 difficult to get overnight permits for the Whitney Zone. However, as the trip approached the weather forecast continued to get worse. As Ben S had never seen rain in the eastern sierras and my past experiences with sierra rain mainly consisted of light drizzle, we decided to head out anyway on a Friday afternoon - hoping the weather wouldn’t be as bad as forecast.

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The plan was to camp at Horseshoe Meadows Friday night to start acclimatizing, drive to Whitney Portal Saturday, and summit Russell / hike out Sunday. As we drove out we saw rain clouds but experienced no rain. However, the trip started to not go to plan as we drove up the road to Horseshoe Meadows at sunset, as Ben S’s miata started to overheat. We discovered the coolant tank was completely empty, unable to go higher we turned around. However even coasting down the road still caused the engine to overheat. We then added my nalgene of water to the coolant tank, and drove to Lone Pine with a successfully cooled engine. After being cooked spending the night camping in Alabama Hills (where the high was over 100F that day), we drove to Whitney Portal early Saturday morning.

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The day was already hot and sunny when we started backpacking up the Whitney Trail at 7:30AM, but as we reached Clyde Meadow at 10AM a heavy downpour started plus thunder. We continued hiking up as the slabs we were on turned into waterfalls, and set up camp by Upper Boyscout Lake an hour later. We spent much of the day hunkering down in the tent, trying to dry off and listening to heavy rain plus thunder, considering our life choices. The rain eased with a few sunny spells, which allowed us to dry most of our soaked gear plus make dinner.

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With more rain forecast Sunday, we decided to start early. In a light drizzle, we started slogging up the endless sand and choss gully that leads to Russell at 2:30AM. The drizzle soon stopped, and we reached the base of the East Arete in complete darkness. As we started scrambling up the arete, which was thankfully dry, we watched eerie lighting flashes on the other side of the Owens River valley from us. For Ben S, scrambling in the dark using a headlamp was a new experience.

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The scrambling was high quality, and at times very exposed, but we made it to the true summit just as the sun rose. We briefly eyed the beautiful view, then noticed a large storm cloud moving towards us from Mt Whitney.

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As we started to downclimb the arete, the storm rolled overhead, dumping heavy rain on us plus some snow. Downclimbing the soaking wet, cold arete with 1000ft exposure was slow going and mentally draining, but we reached the base of the route safely. We both agreed this was an experience neither of us would want to repeat.

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When we reached camp, it was still dry there, so we packed up camp and quickly started hiking out, before any more storms could roll in. Just after we reached the trailhead at 11AM, it started raining yet again.

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On the long drive back to San Diego we discussed how the sierras really can have crazy weather and heavy rain. The following weekend I again did Mt Russell but via Fishhook Arete, but this time the weather was as it usually is in the summer: sunny and clear.

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