Two friends and I went backpacking in the high Sierras for 10 days during the first part of September in 1977, the year we graduated high school. My friend Bill Cassidy and a friend of his named Craig (I don't remember his last name), started out from Independence, north of Whitney, and hiked from a trailhead up over Kearsarge pass and hooked up with a section of the John Muir trail. We had 40-pound packs. I'd never been backpacking, and spent most of the trip suffering from altitude sickness off and on. However, we made good time, averaging about 6 miles a day. We went over Forrester Pass during a snow-storm, and had to descend 1,000 feet of switchbacks in a snowstorm that kept getting worse as we went down, eventually obliterating the trail. Lucky for us one of the few people we saw the entire trip was at the bottom of the trail, saw us coming, and helped us get off the trail and camped so we could escape the direct effects of the snow. On the 9th day of the trip, we ascended to Trailcrest, where we were supposed to camp for the night, planning to ascend to the top of Whitney the next day. However, it was windy and cold at Trailcrest (on the way up we met a guy coming down from Trailcrest who said the wind chill factor was 60 below zero up there). My two friends thought it would be better to go up to the top then (early afternoon), and so we hiked the last 2 miles of the trial without packs. Then, after we got to the top, took pictures (slides, I think, no digital cameras back then), we decided to get as far down the mountain we could before the sun went down. We "slid" down the side of the mountain across a snow field which was becoming crusty with the advancing shade. Though I almost slid a long way on my back before Craig caught my pack as I was sliding by at high speed, we made it most of the way down before day ended. I'll never forget what we did and saw. I have not been backpacking before or since that trip, but I will always remember having stood at the top of Whitney. The view cannot be beat, and neither can the sense of accomplishment.