Preparing for Whitney

In less than a week from now, I'll be attempting to climb Mt. Whitney. It will be grueling, judging from the way I've done on all two of the practice hikes I've finished. I've discovered I am a slow hiker. Besides the hikes, I haven't been doing anything special to train for it, except for of course, the background training I'm doing for Ironman. The Boy suggested I make friends with Mr. Stairmaster but I barely have enough time to juggle everything else so it didn't get done. I'm not so worried that I won't be in good enough physical shape to do it though. I'm more concerned about the altitude. I've never been up that high before and have no idea how it will affect me. The highest training hike we did was Mt. San Gorgonio which was "only" 11,5K ft -- certainly not 14.5K!

Because we'll have to camp for a couple of days before the hike, I've been tinkering with food to bring. I borrowed a friend's dehydrator for the projects and have been trying to dehydrate all kinds of vegetables. My plan is to make some kind of dried soup mix that I can add hot water to and have for meals. I suppose I could bring canned soups, but those are usually filled with salt and never have enough greens in them. These dried soup mixes will also be very light which is a plus while camping, even though we won't have to carry our meals with us since we'll be attempting to do the entire hike in one day.

Other things I'm thinking of bringing on the actual hike include:

• dried fruit (figs, raisins)
• nuts and seeds (raw almonds, cashews, sunflower seeds)
• homemade "larabars"
• roasted chickpeas
• baby carrots

I noticed I easily tired of eating sweet items on the previous hikes so I'm trying some savory things to mix it up. I'm also trying to stay away from commercially processed "energy" and granola bars. So many of them contain soy isolate protein, including my favorites (Clif bars). Oh well, that's why I make my own!