Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Mt Russell info

Hey folks...assuming I can get logistics worked out, I was consideirng going up Mt Russell and had a couple questions about going up. Basically it boils down to pathfinding and how difficult it is to stay on track. Is it easy to pick out the Ebersbacher ledges (sp?) Are their cairns along the way to help mark the paths? What's the distance form trailhead to summit?

While I've done class 3 stuff before (Longs Peak), the pathfinding is the only part that would concern me. Longs Peak was pretty easy to deal with because you either had cairns pointing the way or the bullseye markers. Not sure here.

I tried doing a search through the boards, but didn't see anything that would help out here (or overlooked it). I'm just looking to gather some additional research before deciding whether to do this. TIA

SeanB

The approach for Russell (assuming you mean the E Ridge, rather than say the south face or a technical route) is the same as for the Mountaineer's Route on Whitney through Upper Boy Scout Lake (this includes the ledges). There are many descriptions of that route on this board and in various trip reports on the web (as well as guide books). From UBSL you head roughly north up a use trail and just keep going up until you get to a large plateau with Carillon on your right and the east ridge of Russell on your left...
Feel free to email me for more specifics.

Hey Root. Yeah I was looking toward the east face of Russell. I tried both the PM and the email link, but they didn't seem to work. I can be contacted via forceinfinity on hotmail (I'm trying to avoid spam sniffers if they're out there).

Basically the two areas where pathfinding might be tough is knowing where to start up the ledges when I reach them, and then once in the boy scout areas toward the east ridge.

There's also a part of me thinking I should wait till next year to do this in August when I'll have a bit more in the way of daylight to work with. On the other hand, weather is looking *really* favorable for this Friday...so who knows.

Again thanks for any info

SeanB

Sean, for anyone with significant off-trail experience, finding the e-ledges is trivial. It is absolutely obvious, and the path could not be simpler to follow, than if it were spray painted.

The tree at the start, showed me where it was at least a half-hour before I got to it, the first time I did it.

This time of year, with the water level down, and the brush trampled down, is probably the easiest, route-wise (other than in the snow)

Hey Ken-

Thanks for the info. Sounds like I'll take a whack at that then. Gonna probably target for 15 hour round trip similar to the Whitney main hike that I pulled off successfully.

SeanB

photos from last month: http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/553367010nmAyON

Thanks everyone for all the replies. This is definitely a help out. J...thanks for the email.

SeanB