Mount Whitney

Nothing else in the Lower 48 stands higher. Mount Whitney tops out at 14,505 feet on the Sierra crest, and the geographic joke of the Eastern Sierra is that the lowest ground in North America lies under ninety miles east of it, both visible on a clear day from the right overlook. The peak was named in 1864 for Josiah Whitney, the state geologist whose survey mapped it.

The standard route is not a climb but a very long walk: 22 miles round trip from Whitney Portal at 8,360 feet, gaining more than six thousand vertical feet, including ninety-nine switchbacks up to Trail Crest. It is non-technical when the snow is gone and genuinely serious anyway. Most day hikers leave in the dark and finish in twelve to fourteen hours, and altitude turns back a good share of them regardless of fitness.

Permits are required year-round, and during the quota season from May 1 to November 1 they go through a lottery that opens on recreation.gov each February, with a hundred day-use and sixty overnight spots a day. Plan a year ahead or plan to lose. The summit is also the southern terminus of the John Muir Trail.

If you are not hiking it, drive the thirteen miles up Whitney Portal Road from Lone Pine anyway. The road climbs through the Alabama Hills and ends in granite and running water, and there is a store at the top that makes an outsized pancake.