With the goal of doing the East Arete of Mt Russell, Ben Schauer and I (Ben Mous) managed to snag two difficult-to-get overnight permits for the Whitney Zone. As the trip approached, the weather forecast continued to get worse. As Schauer had never seen rain in the eastern sierras, and my past experiences with Sierra rain mainly consisted of light drizzle, we decided to head out anyway on a Friday afternoon - hoping the weather wouldn’t be as bad as forecast. ![weather][image7.jpg]
The plan was to camp at Horseshoe Meadows Friday night to start acclimatizing, drive to Whitney Portal Saturday, and summit Russell / hike out Sunday. As we drove out we saw rain clouds but experienced no rain. However, the trip started to not go to plan as we drove up the road to Horseshoe Meadows at sunset, as Ben S’s miata started to overheat. We discovered the coolant tank was completely empty; unable to go higher, we turned around. Unfortunately, even coasting down the road caused the engine to overheat.
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