Hikers Carrying 150 Pounds of Gear Rescued From Mount Whitney

By Bethanie Hestermann

Published

11/15/2024

Two hikers who set out to summit Mount Whitney needed a rescue when they learned too late that they had way too much gear and couldn’t continue as planned. Inyo County Search and Rescue (SAR) shared the story on its Facebook profile, outlining what went wrong, what went right, and what lessons other hikers can learn from this incident.

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“On Nov 2nd, Inyo SAR was called out to help two exhausted and ill-prepared hikers,” the organization wrote in its Facebook post. “The subjects had started their summit attempt at 6PM on Friday with 150lbs of newly-purchased gear plus 5 gallons of water. Their plan was to camp at Lone Pine Lake and summit on Saturday. After hiking 2.7 miles until about 3AM, they were exhausted, and one subject had two blisters and a bad headache, so they camped on the trail. Later, they woke up to find it snowing, and their shoes had filled with snow. Using their iPhone’s SOS via satellite, they called for help.”

The hikers were able to descend after resting with some help from SAR and a Good Samaritan named Bridget, who helped carry their gear.

Inyo SAR shared some tidbits of advice for other hikers, including what went wrong here. The organization wrote that attempting Mount Whitney or a similar peak without prior experience and proper preparation is not a good idea. Also, Inyo SAR says the hikers were “carrying excess water weight” and lacked knowledge about water-filtration options. (Note that the 150 pounds of gear did not include the additional weight from their 5 gallons of water.)

The rule of thumb for backpacking is to carry no more than 20% of your body weight.

See Inyo County Search and Rescue’s full post about the Mount Whitney rescue here: