Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board John Muir's Second Ascent of Mt Whitney

It's a scan of a newspaper article, so here's a link to my Google Docs...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CBUdUwFoXumLQl41UiBeyLyF9HsPbbhy/view?usp=sharing

I get the impression they may have gone over Whitney/Russell above UBSL, down the Arctic Lake Drainage to the "West Face"...

He talks about not wanting to take the group up the North Face (quote in the MR Conditions thread)...

Doug and Richard,

Thanks for posting Muir's account of his second ascent (1875). Sounds to me like Muir's group made it to Iceberg Lake (East Face Lake). But then they did not go up the long Chute which Muir did on October 21, 1873 and Clyde later called the Mountaineers Route. Rather for safety, Muir lead the team over Whitney Russell Pass, down to a lake, and then "gradually climbed higher, mounting a spiral around the northwest shoulder of the mountain, then directly to the summit.

Doug,

I've searched a bit for a Soda Springs in the Big Whitney Meadow area, but only find a Soda Springs considerably to the SSE near Monache Mountain. This Saturday I'll be at Muir's house in Martinez and will try to see if I can learn something there (though the the University of the Pacific seems to be ground zero for collecting historical papers/materials on Muir).

Jim

Interesting…
I mentioned some exploring I’d done on MC and root around Monache..
Lots of remnants of big camps down there…
It’s a long way to Whitney…

Hi Richard

Thanks for posting that. I tried to wrap my head around what Muir did on that trip. When I was through the Arctic Lake route in 2010 I never considered that route to the top.

I am not sure at which one of the lakes Muir started his spiral around. I wonder if it was Arctic lake itself or the smaller lakes higher above it?

Photo is looking west (on the way to Guitar Lake.) Harvey

[img]https://postimg.cc/9RXf3rMy[/img]

Starting off topic...
Photos from our Mexico Trip (2012) have been showing up in My Memories Feed...


From the trips that I've done down the Artic Lake drainage, I've always been "pulled up" on a fairly high traverse around to the west side of Whitney, but that doesn't happen until after passing Arctic. Of course, I already know what the west side looks like and know that the JMT is there to make the climb up "easy."

The North Face of Whitney is "menacing" all the way past it...

I remember it well. My unstable knee finally got replaced in 2018.

Harvey