Mt Whitney: no chillin' on the summit

And a long day it was indeed. The hike from the camping at Whitney
Portal to the summit and back took us 15 hours. But it wasn't the
lenght of the trail or the elevation gain: it was the altitude above
sea level that turned the hike unexpectedly from hard and rewarding to
unpleasant and concerning at times. The trouble began as I started
feeling bad around 12 000 ft (3600m). As we continued to ascend at
first I felt still quite alright, though shaken by the altitude. But
on the last 600 vertical ft (200m) I started feeling rapidly worse and
as we reached the summit I knew I had symptoms of accute altitude
sickness: headache, weekness plus a racing pulse and fast breath which
would not slow down while resting. Fortunately Mariusz remained
largely unaffected by the altitude. So the picture of me on the top
doesn't tell the truth: I wasn't enjoying myself but struggling to
pull myself together. Lying down didn't help so after barely 5 minutes
on the top we started descending, the only remedy in such cases. The
more we descended, the better I felt and after loosing some 1000ft
(300m) of altitude I almost fully recovered for the remaining 5 hours
of further descend to the base.

Yes, we made it to the top, but I did not enjoy the view.