Mount Whitney

Mount Whitney (Paiute: Tumanguya; Too-man-i-goo-yah) is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States, with an elevation of 14,505 feet (4,421 m).^[1] It is in East–Central California, in the Sierra Nevada, on the boundary between California's Inyo and Tulare counties, and 84.6 miles (136.2 km)^[8] west-northwest of North America's lowest topographic point, Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park, at 282 ft (86 m) below sea level.^[9] The mountain's west slope is in Sequoia National Park and the summit is the southern terminus of the John Muir Trail, which runs 211.9 mi (341.0 km) from Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley.^[10] The eastern slopes are in Inyo National Forest in Inyo County. Mount Whitney is ranked 18th by topographic isolation.

Quick Facts Highest point, Elevation ...

Mount Whitney
Fisherman's Peak
East Face close-up seen from the Whitney Portal
Highest point
Elevation	14,505 ft (4,421 m) NAVD 88[1]
Prominence	10,075 ft (3,071 m)[2]
Parent peak	Pico de Orizaba[3]
Isolation	1,647 mi (2,651 km)[2]
Listing	World's most prominent peaks 81st World's most isolated peaks 18th North America's highest peaks 24th  North America's prominent peaks 16th  North America's isolated peaks 4th U.S. state high point 2nd U.S. highest major peaks 11th California's highest major peaks 1st California fourteeners 1st[4] California county high points 1st SPS Emblem peak[5] Western States Climbers Star peak[6] Ultra-prominent peak
Coordinates	36°34′43″N 118°17′31″W[1]
Naming
Etymology	Josiah Whitney
Geography
Mount Whitney Show map of California Mount Whitney Show map of the United States
Location	Sequoia National Park Inyo National Forest Sequoia-Kings Canyon Wilderness John Muir Wilderness  Inyo and Tulare counties, California, U.S.
Parent range	Sierra Nevada
Topo map	USGS Mount Whitney
Geology
Rock age	Cretaceous
Mountain type	Granite
Climbing
First ascent	August 18, 1873 by Charles Begole, Albert Johnson, and John Lucas[7]
Easiest route	Mount Whitney Trail (class 1)

Close

Mount Whitney's summit is on the Sierra Crest and the Great Basin Divide. It lies near many of the Sierra Nevada's highest peaks.^[11] The peak rises dramatically above the Owens Valley, sitting 10,778 feet (3,285 m) or just over 2 mi (3.2 km) above the town of Lone Pine 15 mi (24 km) to the east, in the Owens Valley.^[11] It rises more gradually on the west side, lying only about 3,000 feet (914 m) above the John Muir Trail at Guitar Lake.^[12]

The mountain is partially dome-shaped, with its famously jagged ridges extending to the sides.^[13] Mount Whitney is above the tree line and has an alpine climate and ecology.^[14] Very few plants grow near the summit: one example is the sky pilot, a cushion plant that grows low to the ground.^[15] The only animals are transient, such as the butterfly Parnassius phoebus and the gray-crowned rosy finch.^[15]

Whitney's eastern slope is far steeper than its western slope because the Sierra Nevada is the result of a fault block that is analogous to a cellar door: the door is hinged on the west and is slowly rising on the east.^[17]

The rise is caused by a fault system that runs along the Sierra's eastern base, below Mount Whitney. Thus, the granite that forms Whitney is the same as that which forms the Alabama Hills, thousands of feet lower down.^[15] The raising of Whitney (and the downdrop of the Owens Valley) is due to the same geological forces that cause the Basin and Range Province: the crust of much of the intermontane west is slowly being stretched.^[18]

The granite that forms Mount Whitney is part of the Sierra Nevada Batholith.^[19] In Cretaceous time, masses of molten rock that originated from subduction rose underneath what is now Whitney and solidified underground to form large expanses of granite.^[19] In the last 2 to 10 million years, the Sierra was pushed up, enabling glacial and river erosion to strip the upper layers of rock to reveal the resistant granite that makes up Mount Whitney today.^[20]

Mount Whitney has an alpine tundra climate (ET) under the Köppen climate classification. Summer temperatures are highly variable, ranging from below freezing (32 °F (0 °C)) to highs near 80 °F (27 °C) during extreme heat waves in the Owens Valley.

Based on the range from the highest average high of 25.7 °F (−3.5 °C) to the lowest average low of 4.2 °F (−15.4 °C) for winter temperatures in the table (December to March), every 1 inch (25 mm) of liquid precipitation equates to approximately 15–40 inches (380–1,020 mm) of snow, with lower temperatures producing the greater snow depths.^[21]

There is no weather station at the summit, but this climate table contains interpolated data for an area below the summit.

In July 1864, the members of the California Geological Survey named the peak after Josiah Whitney, the state geologist of California and benefactor of the survey.^[7] During the same expedition, geologist Clarence King attempted to climb Whitney from its west side, but stopped just short. In 1871, King returned to climb what he believed to be Whitney, but having taken a different approach, he actually summited nearby Mount Langley. Upon learning of his mistake in 1873, King finally completed his own first ascent of Whitney, but did so a month too late to be first.^[24] On August 18, 1873, Charles Begole, A. H. Johnson, and John Lucas, all of nearby Lone Pine, had become the first to reach the contiguous United States' highest summit. As they climbed the mountain during a fishing trip to nearby Kern Canyon, they called the mountain Fisherman's Peak.^[7]

In 1881, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory founder Samuel Pierpont Langley remained on the summit for some time, making daily observations of the solar heat.^[25] Accompanying Langley in 1881 was another party consisting of Judge William B. Wallace of Visalia, W. A. Wright and Reverend Frederick Wales.^[26] In his memoirs,^[27] Wallace wrote, "The Pi Ute [Paiute] Indians called Mount Whitney Too-man-i-goo-yah, which means 'the very old man.' They believe that the Great Spirit who presides over the destiny of their people once had his home in that mountain." The spelling Too-man-i-goo-yah is a transliteration from the indigenous Paiute Mono language. Another variation is Too-man-go-yah.^[28]

In 1891, the United States Geological Survey's Board on Geographic Names decided to recognize the name Mount Whitney. Despite losing out on their preferred name, Lone Pine residents financed the first trail to the summit, engineered by Gustave Marsh, and completed on July 22, 1904. Four days later, the new trail enabled the first recorded death on Whitney. Having hiked the trail, U.S. Bureau of Fisheries employee Byrd Surby was struck and killed by lightning while eating lunch on the summit. In response, Marsh began work on the stone hut that became the Smithsonian Institution Shelter, completing it in 1909.^[29]

A movement began after World War II to rename the mountain for Winston Churchill,^[30] but the name Mount Whitney persisted.

• List of mountain peaks of California
• List of California county high points
• List of U.S. states by elevation
• List of the highest major summits of the United States
• List of the most prominent summits of the United States
• List of the most isolated major summits of the United States
• Whitney Classic