From Badwater to Mt. Whitney — climbing California's extremes

In one California summer, Keith Sherwood did the state's great vertical round-trip: he started at the bottom of Death Valley — Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level, the lowest point in North America — and finished on the summit of Mt. Whitney, 14,505 feet above the Pacific, the highest point in the contiguous United States. The gap between those two points is 14,787 vertical feet and about 85 highway miles.

This was Keith's own "virtual" challenge after years of chronicling the family's flat-ground adventures: soccer fields, beaches, and the backyard of the remodel. The climb itself is logged in the archive's Whitney section, kept even though its original photo pages did not survive the Internet Archive.

The route, in brief

• Badwater Basin, Death Valley (−282 ft) — the start line: a salt flat so low that telescopes on the surrounding ridge see it from above.
• Acclimation — Eastern Sierra camping under aspens while the lungs learn 8,000 feet.
• Whitney Portal (8,374 ft) — trailhead burgers, bear boxes, and a night of too-little sleep.
• The 99 switchbacks — granite staircase climbing 1,700 feet in under two miles, best counted, not seen.
• Trail Crest & the arête — the knife-edge of the Sierra at 13,700 feet.
• Summit (14,505 ft) — the Smithsonian hut, the register, and the whole of the Sierra Nevada laid out below.

Numbers worth knowing

• Summit 14,505 ft — highest point in the contiguous 48 states
• Round trip ~22 miles from Whitney Portal, 6,100+ ft of gain
• Permits required for day hikes and overnights — a lottery decides summer dates
• Season July–September for the ice-free trail

Planning your own Badwater-to-Whitney double? Read the family's Death Valley and Sierra notes in the archive, then train on stairs with a full pack — Keith's verdict stands: the descent is harder than the climb.