On July 28th, 2025 three of us did the Candlelight Traverse near Mt Whitney in the eastern Sierra. I found this route here on the FKT website, but no one had posted a time on it yet. We decided to give it a go and see if we could find the route.
We set out from the Meysan Lakes Trailhead just after noon on a perfect summer day. We headed up the Whitney Trail to Lone Pine Lake where the route leaves the trail and begins a steep slog up a shelf system to the Candlelight Ridge. Once on the ridge the terrain gets steep and slabby. A bit of route-finding brought us over a bump, through a deep (4th class) notch, and eventually to the summit of Candlelight. The views of Mt Whitney and the surrounding area were breathtaking! Or maybe it was the altitude taking our breath away, lol.
We descended east down the decomposed granite slope toward Meysan Lake and hit the trail taking us all the way back down to the Whitney Campground and the trailhead where we started. We didn't push super hard on this effort, however the 3 of us are fairly fit and I thought this effort was good enough to submit as an FKT since there was no time posted yet. The mark has been set!
We did this in unsupported style, bringing with us all the water and snacks needed for the whole thing. This could go really light and fast, no need for any support of any kind. I would love to go back and give this another go...