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It's not K2 or Kanchenjunga. It's not McKinley or even Kilimanjaro. It's mighty Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in America's Lower 48 states and reputedly the highest walk-up summit on the planet open to just about any local bucket-lister with a healthy pulse, reliable footwear, the right attitude and enough foresight to apply in February for a summer climbing permit.

Perched atop its boulder-strewn crest on a cloudless Saturday afternoon in July or August, gaping over a glorious granite sea of southern Sierra Nevada peaks, is a crowd of high-fivers about as select-looking as a line at the DMV.

Who's standing on top of Whitney this aft? A flushed dad and his slightly pale-looking teenage son. A perky gang of Elderhostel-types munching on apples. An expressionless man carefully scrawling his name on a summit register at the 100-year-old Whitney Hut. There's a dude in a Steelers jersey and cargo shorts, and a coterie of college girls edging toward the peak's rim for the ultimate photo op -- 14,497-feet above sea level, nothing between them and the sepia-brown Owens Valley but a couple of vertical miles of desert wind.

And then there's us. Three humbled guys from Los Angeles who casually decided several months back that climbing Mt. Whitney together might be a nice way to spend a weekend, test a friendship, remind ourselves that we're alive.

Mark Segal is a 38-year-old sales manager from Long Beach with a 4-year-old son, a cellphone that never stops and a new Porsche to celebrate a recent promotion. My other friend Vic Leyson, 32, is a personal business manager from Sherman Oaks who squeezes the odd marathon and photography class between a Rolodex of demanding clients. I'm turning 40, have two young kids, a mortgage and a fickle jogging regimen that will have to suffice for Whitney training.

In other words, none of us is going to Everest in this lifetime. But if we can stand on the top of Mt. Whitney, well, that's something, right?

Others join us in that thinking.

Last year, about 24,000 permits were issued to enter the Whitney Zone. Most climbers arrive in the summer to walk the 11-mile Whitney Trail, the most accessible route to the summit, covering 6,100 feet of elevation gain at a moderate enough grade for even functional acrophobes like me. If you want to climb Mt. Whitney in the warmer months when the mountain isn't steeped in ice, snow storms and bone-chilling temperatures, you need to enter the Mt. Whitney Lottery in February and cross your fingers. There's a joke that the hardest part of climbing this mountain is scaling its tight summer quotas to get a wilderness permit.

But it's just a joke.

"Most people really underestimate this mountain, and I'm not sure why," Inyo wilderness manager Brian Spitek tells me near the trail head at Whitney Portal after I pick up an overnight permit in Lone Pine plus two other Whitney requirements -- a plastic bear canister for storing food on the trail and some free WAG Bag kits, which stands for Waste Alleviation and Gelling. (A few years ago, Whitney removed its solar toilets from the mountain and now all visitors to the Whitney Zone must pack waste out.)

"People in great shape burn out all the time on the Whitney Trail, especially during the summer when you get the crowds," Spitek says.

Every year, there are fatalities and a rash of nightmare scenarios on Mt. Whitney -- people slipping on a patch of ice in June, taking a "short cut," a wrong turn or a bad step in the worst possible place. There are rogue storms, tragic lightning strikes and various other traumas.

The most common problems along the Whitney Trail in the summer, says Spitek, are caused by altitude sickness, sheer exhaustion and grave misjudgment of one's limits -- "or basically some combination of all three."

People often try to climb Whitney too fast, zooming up from sea-level elevations without leaving enough time for the body to acclimate. At least a night near the trail head and a warm-up day hike are recommended.

As you drive up to the trail head from Lone Pine, Whitney's summit looms in the west above a serrated horizon of dull silver peaks. It's high. It's stark. It's aloof. If mountains could talk, this one wouldn't. Yet it beckons with a force that will push regular folks to do irregular things.

Shortly before the hike, Spitek leaves me with this simple advice: "It should be fun. If it's not fun -- mild discomfort aside -- then maybe it's time to turn around."

Friday

3:40 p.m.: Mark and Vic pull into the last available parking space in the overflow lot at the Whitney Portal trail head (8,360 feet). They had planned on camping here with me last night but an emergency sales meeting held Mark back until this morning, which means we'll be diving into our two-day climb about eight minutes after they've arrived from Los Angeles.

"Can you believe we're less than four hours from L.A.?" says Mark, who climbed Whitney 10 years ago and has decided it's time to come back and refresh his memory. He takes a deep, satisfying breath of Sierra air. "I love this place."

4:33 p.m.: "Whose idea was this again?" gasps Mark, stopping several times to lean on his Mt. Whitney-inscribed walking stick and catch his breath. We're about a mile above the trail head on a dirt path gently curving between a broad groove of forested slopes. We can still see parked cars. If climbing Mt. Whitney were a road trip from Santa Monica to Miami, we'd be somewhere around Anaheim.

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