Climbing Mt. Whitney

Climbing Mt. Whitney
As we approached the summit under an iridescent cloudless blue sky, the barren whitish-gray stone mountain seemed determined to pull us down, in the thin air at 14,495 feet my lungs grasped for oxygen, my leadened legs struggled to move, then Andy uttered "Why are we walking in slow motion." Suddenly, we were at the top of this granite pinnacle called Whitney and two miles below us lay the Owens River Valley like a miniature movie set spread out between two majestic mountain ranges, the Sierra Nevadas on the west and Inyo-Whites to the east.