I just returned last night (Nov. 15th) from day hiking Thor Peak via the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek.
1) Whitney Portal Road: USFS road closure sign is at the usual 6600-foot elevation point. Snow level on November 15th was around just under 7000 ft. I was only able to drive to the "Meysan Lakes trailhead parking" brown sign (elev ~ 8000 ft). I have a Honda Accord, front 2WD.
2) Saturday, Nov 15th: I woke up at 3:00am and was walking by 3:35am. I got to the Whitney Portal trailhead (elev ~ 8365 ft) by 4:00am. I saw a couple of trucks parked here (one was a Nissan XTerra with Nevada plates, I believe). At the Portal, the snow was 1 foot deep. The trail was decently packed with a boot track. I then left the main Whitney trail and hiked up the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek towards Lower Boy Scout Lake (at least, what's left of it----LBSL looks more like a pond than a lake now). I took the Ebersbacher Ledges as there wasn't a great deal of snow on it. There was a snow bot track all the way to LBSL. From LBSL, you could still follow a boot track 'til about 10,750 ft. From there on, the boot track was erased by the winds coming down from UBSL and Clyde's Meadow. I had to put crampons on the Clyde's Meadow section just below Upper Boy Scout Lake. Then, I had to take my crampons off and put on snowshoes at UBSL. Definitely, I had to break trail here. Also, the snow was 2 feet deep starting at UBSL (elev ~ 11,300 ft). I then went up about 200 ft or so and turned left (east) towards the NW slope of Thor Peak. When I got to the base, I took my snowshoes off and started climbing. I'm used to climbing class 3 rock on summer (e.g. Middle Pal's NE face, Whitney's MR, etc), however, climbing class 3 with snow on it turned out to be quite interesting. It took me 50 minutes to reach the summit from the base (800 ft of gain). I climbed mostly towards climber's right of the NW face of Thor. I reached the summit at 11:17am.
I stayed there 15 minutes. It was windy and quite chilly. The Owens valley was covered with clouds (I couldn't see Lone Pine). I could only see the very tips (summits) of Mt Inyo , Keynot Peak and New York Butte towards the east across Owens valley. The top of the cloud deck was probably setting around 10,000 ft. I was still able to see LBSL from the summit of Thor Peak though. I descended Thor's summit via the east slope (Thor's summit plateau). You can see 2 prominent rock bands with trees in the middle of the 2 as you head east. Then, not knowing, I took a snow chute down to the right of the right most prominent rock band. I actually ended up by Lone Pine Lake. I then took the main trail down towards the Portal. The main trail (at least from Lone Pine Lake down) was decently packed too with boot tracks. I got to my car at 3:05pm. This hike took me longer than I expected. I expected 9-10 hours roundtrip; however, it ended up being almost 12 hours car-to-car. Braking trail from UBSL to the NW base of Thor Peak took me quite some time as well as the class 3 section on Thor's NW face. All in all, though, a good relaxing trip.
