Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Conditions On Baldy

Shin-san, as MooseTracks will tell you I’ve got a very serious allergy to these boots....

.... it’s called pickupyourd*mnfeetitis

So yes I do prefer trail runners over boots. Nothing fancy, I like ACSIC trail runners.

But I’ll have to find a cure for my ‘boot allergy’ if I’m going to use the La Sporto’s on Rainier

Maybe Doug will create a separate forum called "Competitive Speed Hiking on Mt Baldy".

IT'S NOT A COMPETITION...

Some people just enjoy going fast once in a while.

And most of us realize that if an Olympic Caliber Athlete showed up, we'd be left in the dust within the first 100 meters.

If you want to scratch your competitive Baldy itch (Hmm.. that doesn't sound right), check out the Baldy Run to the Top at:
http://www.run2top.com/info.lasso
Monday, September 05, 2011

Some really speedy folks show up for this thing.....with some very impressive times
Course record
Women time: 1:15:32 Carrie Garritson (Age 11) 1988
Men time: 1:00:49 Matt Ebiner 1987

Last year I hiked Baldy on September 3rd using the Manker Flats to ski hut trail. The trail was surprisingly sparse, relatively speaking--I maybe ran accross 14 people on the trail. I had no idea that there was a race to to the top up the backbone that day. While I never expect solitude on that mountain, I wasn't quite prepared to see several hundred people up there either. Watching all those people high fiving each other after they had just run the trail to 10,064 gave new meaning to "runner's high."

Read this:



while looking for info on the roads above Kennedy Meadows and thought of you and your trail runners...

Read this:



in the same report and remembered that I received a bunch of Text Messages while I was in Death Valley last weekend. (Work phone is AT&T. Did they put an antenna on top of Rogers?)(I know, I probably should have posted this in the Mahogany Flat thread, but don't feel like it.)

. . . but by the 3rd or 4th summit in a one-day period, I suspect you guys would be hangin' pretty tough.

Last month I had a friend on the MR and I received text messages and phone calls from the Notch, Iceberg Lake, Clyde Meadow and Lower Boy Scout Lake. She was using a iPhone on AT&T. AT&T must of installed new antennas in the Owens Valley.

Hey Mike, this is an off-topic thread. Why are you posting info about phone service on Whitney?

Seriously, I used to be able to make AT&T calls from UBSL and some places in the drainage below LBSL, but never up beyond UBSL. Good to hear you can get a signal up there (for those times I want to sneak away from work, but need to be able to react to an emergency... I'll just use some of that blazing speed to get back down to the car...) I guess Verizon getting the iPhone has benefits for old iPhone users too.

BTW, some of us will be heading up Baldy on Saturday morning via the Ski Hut Trail. (I was going to force Shin to do the Six Peaks Loop, but I know he's had much more important things to do (besides working out)).

BTW II, I rather be out climbing but the Casperson Weather Station is reporting 97 degrees out there. I'm turning on the AC and the TV...

OK. Thank God you clarified that. I guess it's just a routine case of testosterone poisoning then...

That's a better response than the typical slowpoke gives about stopping to smell the roses.

And I'm not sorry it rubs you the wrong way...

Have a fun climb Carole. Sign the register for me. It's been too long...

Just having some fun, Richard.

Looking again at those photos and where many were taken - today I hiked up to Morris from the Siebert Cabin, and realized it was the first time I'd been up that route since the big fire last summer. Although the pinyons and joshua trees will never recover, there are an amazing amount of grasses and flowers now. Someone's been doing some work trying to create a trail between the top of the ridge and the PCT. I suspect maybe the local Boy Scouts because there were new distance numbers on some of the stakes. However, they appeared to be reversed - while the signs pointed towards the PCT, the closer you got, the higher the number. It was a bit perplexing at first until I realized the numbers were placed on the wrong side of the fiberglass state.

Sadly, the Siebert Cabin is getting trashed. Not an intact pane of glass this year unfortunately.

A,B & C were goofing around on Baldy yesterday.
Conditions are dry with occasional patches of melting snow. Devils backbone route has had a slide in the last few days - we were told by a group that had just trod across it.

Saw some guy going up and down the mountain with a dish towel on his head. I think the last time we saw him he was on his 4th summit, on his way to 5x in one day. He was looking strong. We fed him Cheetos as we continuously passed him. Friendly bloke - I wish him well on his adventure.

Saw a storm blow in as we drove away. Hope Mother nature let him finish.

C~

WOW! Shin told me he was going to wait a couple weeks to attempt 5 summits. That rascal, I wanted to be there when he did it....

Hi Richard,
Congratulations on your easy 5X Mt. Baldy in a day.

We will repair the rut you created on the trail this week.
Sorry, I couldn't work on water and supply stand.

Looking forward to your 6X challenge soon.

Shin

What better day would there be than Friday the Thirteenth?

Thanks Shin and Jeff.

Sorry I couldn't wait for you guys, but rounds four and five were way too hot for me and it'll only get worse as we head into summer. Shin, if my feet were replaceable (Is that a word?), I think I could pull off six. The legs and heart were much better than expected, but I really could not stand putting weight on my feet at the end.

(Quite a few people I met along the trail were urging me on to six. Thanks.)

A SPECIAL thank you to Team ABC... The lunch and snacks (and the gift) were way beyond the call of duty! Whatever was in those gell packs that Ava let me grab from her pack worked wonders...

==========

For those who like to see numbers:

2:02
2:04
2:08 (Much slower if I add the socializing time back in, but I was trying to see how the repeats were going, so I stopped the clock at each stop.)
2:22
2:23

I wanted 5 on 4 hours, but the last one ended up being 4:08+-.

==========

I'd still like to see EK head up there and cruise thru six, maybe even seven.

Congrats RichardP, that’s some serious uber-hiking.
According to the Forest Service map they hand out at the Baldy Village Ranger Station its 4.6 miles from Manker Flats to the summit via the Ski Hit trail with a gain of 3904’.
So the cumulative stats are something like this….very impressive

Laps/Cumulative Miles/Cumulative gain in feet
1/9.2/3904
2/18.4/7808
3/27.6/11712
4/36.8/15616
5/46/19520
6/55.2/23424
7/64.4/27328

Also, noticed in your photos the Baldy sunrise summit shadow cast over ~Glendale area...never noticed that before....very cool

Now I got work on >3X......

Thanks Rick.

My GPS states: 41.18 miles, 23,202'. (That elevation gain feels suspect to me, but I did do extra climbing to stay mostly off of the snow.)

I went off-route following some bad tracks on the first trip down and visited the crash site. Thank goodness, I knew where I was and climbed out and back to the trail.

I'll try and convert the track to a .jpg and post it. It's interesting that I thought I was following the same path each trip (after sunrise), but the track has me wandering all over the place.

Congrats, Richard. I just happened to check your SPOT on Friday at work and when I saw the crap load of SPOT tracks on Baldy, I knew what you were up to.

Btw, I was expecting 6 summits from you