We started seeing the first morning hikers around 4am. They were planning for a noon summit and beer back in town before 6. This was probably a smart way to do it, though they did seem out of place hiking by headlamp (on purpose) hours before dawn. We did see one hiker around 3am at above 13,000 feet above Trail's Crest. He had no idea what time it was and seemed as surprised to see us as we were him. Joel guessed he must be a solo John Muir Trail hiker. We're not sure where else he could have come from at that hour. But very few (if any) people asked what we were doing walking down the mountain in the wee hours of the morning with rock climbing equipment; most only asked in a way that suggested they were able to recognize our gear and wanted us to appreciate that fact if we had been rock climbing. Our appropriate enough response was yes we had been, and occasionally we'd answer the follow-up question that we had climbed the East Buttress of Whitney. Maybe they likened our early morning constitutional to a morning-after "walk of shame" and so they didn't probe any further. At the time, this was about the extent of our reasoning abilities, though in retrospect, we probably weren't the first thing on their minds either, as for many Whitney hikers, the trail is often the most difficult or significant hike of their hiking career and at the hour we were likely to see them they were running on little sleep and a lot of adrenaline.