Good Beginning, Low Midday, Good Ending. Day 17. 26,449 steps.

Guitar Lake.

Left Wallace creek at 7am. Very cold morning, freezing fingers. Left with lots of clothes on. Climbed up and up and up through Sandy Meadows towards Crabtree Meadows Junction. We had to pick up our WAGBAGS (ick) at the Ranger station junction.

Joan and I met up at the junction around the same time. Hank came about 30 minutes later. But NO Kathleen? That was odd. Hank had last seen her at Sandy Meadows but went off for a potty break and never saw her again? We waited for 1 hour and then I became nervous. Where was she? We started a well planned search and after about another hour we met up with a Park Ranger and she began initiating a radio search as well with other Rangers. We talked to everyone we saw and inquired about Kathleen. Most of us are familiar with each other at this point in the hike. No one had seen her.

Long story very short. We found her. She mistakenly took the wrong junction and got on the PCT. As she was doing the loop to get back on the JMT, we must have just missed her as we circled around also? We were all so happy to see her. Your mind goes into weird places when you think someone might be hurt, or something???

Walked on through the afternoon to Guitar Lake. Now the focus is on eating lots of food to get rid of any extra weight as we will be doing the BIG summit of Whitney tomorrow. The storm does look like its building up, so the consensus is to leave at 3AM with headlamps. We should be off of Whitney by 12ish noon to be safe.

Guitar Lake is a trippy place. Very barren, but lots of hikers all with the same idea of summiting early morning. No real coverage from the elements so people get creative in their little sites!! Hank was ready for any invasion of critters, and such!