Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board TR - North Fork, East Buttress, & Mountaineer's

I just returned from a fantastic Mt. Whitney trip. Only a couple days off the mountain and I'm already day dreaming of my next Whitney climb!

On Thursday I flew from SLC to Long Beach, where two friends picked me up. We drove to Lone Pine, picked up our permit, and stopped by a climbing shop (Elevation) to ask about conditions. I had heard mixed reports on snow conditions, so I wanted to find out if leaving my snow shoes at home had been a mistake. Fortunately, we were told the snow was consolidated enough to go without snow shoes. I was relieved.

We left the shop and drove to the Portal, where we scoured the car for anything that would tempt a bear (or a hungry BYU co-ed), divided our climbing gear, and started up the Whitney Trail.

The North Fork trail was straight forward, but the Creek was running higher than I've ever seen it. We had to take off our shoes and wade where usually one can hop from rock to rock (at the waterfall below the ledges). The ledges were clear and easy and we arrived at LBSL a couple hours after starting without incident.

The regular LBSL crossing was under a few feet of water, so we crossed before (east of) the standard crossing. The trail from LBSL to UBSL was covered in patches of snow above LBSL, but this actually served to make route-finding easier, as any one boot path in the snow was likely to converge at the correct crossing, etc. I highly recommend moving through this area as quickly as possible, however, as the ice on the waterfalls above is quickly melting and large blocks of ice and snow seem to regularly tumble down in the vicinity. Because the boot tracks were deeply cut and the snow was relatively solid, we wore approach shoes without crampons for this portion.

We reached UBSL an hour or so later and decided to set up camp. We had originally planned to camp at Iceberg, but because we were told it was still mostly frozen and covered in snow, we decided to opt for UBSL. I prefer the taste of filtered water to melted water, any day. It seemed many others feel likewise, as several others, including a SWS guided group, were also camped there.

The next morning we left around 7:30 for Iceberg Lake. The steep, north-facing, snow slope above UBSL had positive, consolidated boot tracks, so we chose to ascent again in our approach shoes without crampons. We continued this way until just below Iceberg Lake, where we found a long traverse and somewhat steeper ground. We decided to put on our crampons - probably not necessary, but we figured if we were carrying them we might as well put them on our feet.

We reached Iceberg Lake around 9:30 AM and immediately began the approach to the East Buttress Route, just left (south) of the Mountaineer's Culoir. We arrived at the base of the route at 10:30 AM, and began melting water and racking up. This process took much longer than expected and would end up changing our plans.

I led the first pitch - fun, easy climbing (5.6) up a left-facing corner below the second tower. The route was completely clear of snow. Above the first pitch is a large ledge and an excellent rock horn, which I used to build our anchor. At this point, it was already 11:30 AM and neither of my partners had followed the pitch. I calculated our rate of ascent, visualized the remaining 10 pitches, and realized that we had a choice to make.

When both of my partners arrived on the ledge an hour later, I presented our options: 1. continue up the East Buttress and climb the last 3-4 pitches in the dark and cold then bivy in the summit hut overnight, or 2. retreat by rapping into the Mountaineer's Culoir, ascend it to the top and arrive at the summit with plenty of daylight left to get down and back to camp before dark. Fortunately, we chose the latter.

After hanging out and having a leisurely lunch on the ledge, we used some gray webbing on the horn for an anchor (to match the rock as closely as possible), we rappelled down into the MR Culoir, stashed our trad gear, and climbed up to the notch. It was around 2:30 PM.

The snow in the Culoir was firm and the boot path was obvious and positive. We put on our crampons but didn't need axes. When we arrived at the notch around 4:00, we were surprised to see that the chute was mostly clear of snow, with the exception of the final, steep, 100 feet. We scrambled up the rocks on the left (east) side of the chute until we reached the snow. Here we put on our crampons and pulled out the axes, and simul-climbed to the summit, topping out just before 5:00 PM.

We had the entire summit to ourselves. Not a gust of wind blew, and the air was at least 10 degrees warmer than I had expected. As always, the views were marvelous.

We spent an hour enjoying the views and taking photos, then rapped down the Chute (4 double raps with 70m rope) all the way to the notch, then continued down to Iceberg and our camp at UBSL below. I was very glad to have my crampons and gaiters for the trip down. While I only post-holed once, the gaiters protected my pants from my crampons and were very useful.

We took our time getting down and finally arrived in camp just after 9:30 PM. I slept fantastic that night and arose early Saturday morning to perfect weather and a nice hike down to the Portal where we found our car untouched by bears.