Click on the Mount Whitney Sunrise image to enlarge

Mount Whitney Sunrise

Mount Whitney Sunrise is a beautiful way to start a morning. A Mount Whitney Sunrise can be seen on Whitney Portal Road out of Lone Pine, California.

Mount Whitney Sunrise was captured early in the summer and snow is still present on the Whitney landscape. Whitney Portal road eventually ends at the base of Mount Whitney in the area known as Whitney Portal. The Mount Whitney Trailhead is one of the busiest trailheads in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

The Mount Whitney Sunrise photograph captures the landscape that hikers are striving to reach, the Mount Whitney summit. Some do the hike to the summit as a day hike, some overnight on the trail, and others don’t use the trail at all but use climbing routes to reach the summit.

Mount Whitney Sunrise captures alpenglow bathing the highest point in the contiguous United States. The elevation of Mount Whitney is 14,505 feet. The elevation of Mount Whitney has changed over the years. Technology has allowed for more precise measurement to occur. The peak in Mount Whitney Sunrise was calculated for many years as 14,494 feet. This elevation is what is stamped on the USGS brass benchmark on the summit. In 1988 the elevation benchmark was increased to 14,505 feet.

The alpenglow colored granite in Mount Whitney Sunrise is the same granite that forms the Alabama Hills thousands of feet below. The sudden rise of this granite that forms the Sierra Nevada composes the sheer granite face of Mount Whitney. This fault block is formed from a fault line that runs at the base of the Eastern Sierra below Mount Whitney.

South of the main summit there are a series of minor summits that form a series of “needles”. The routes on these include some of the finest big-wall climbing in the high Sierra.

Mount Whitney Sunrise is a beautiful way to start a morning.