Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Time to Summit

I know there are a ton of variables involved but, on my very first attempt, what kind of time can I expect to be on the trail to summit? Assuming that the person has been training, and is in pretty good shape, how long should it take? I know the book says something like 11 hours from Whitney Portal. Is this accurate? What are the average times it takes people to summit.Any info is greatly appreciated.

we just did a one day late June and the slowest in the group took 7 to summit. We based our pace on the book and were surprised how quickly the lower miles went. Beyond Big Horn park, he slowed due to elevation. He had done strength training, a couple of Baldy curcuits but not enough cardio. Round trip started at 5am (too late) and ended at 8pm

Thanks for the response. What time would you have preferred to leave. Because of the time the book said, I was planning on hitting the trail at 1am. Good or bad idea? Whats the earliest people prefer to leave?

We had wanted to leave at 4am, my veteran friends suggested 2am. discounting the waiting time, I and another of our group of 4 did the roundtrip in about 9 hours. Given my experience, i would be walking at 4am and have a definite turn around time of about 1pm. That's nine up and our down trip time was not that much different than the up time. So that would put you back at 10pm

I did my first day hike to the summit last Saturday and it took me 7 hr 45 min. My goal was to follow this guy's timeline:
http://www.dayhiker.com/directory/MtWhitney.htm

I was on schedule up to Trail Crest but after that, my pace slowed a lot because of the altitude. I started at 3am, stayed at the summit for an hour and returned to the Portal at 5:30p. Before Whitney, I had been hiking 4000-5000 foot ascents in the local mountains every week for about a month. That helped a lot with the hiking but the altitude might still get you. I got some good awful headaches going down the switchbacks.

Too many variables. I was in "great shape" the first time I did it and it took me 16 hours RT. I was in even "greater shape" the 2nd time and did it 16.5 hours. I thought I was in great shape the first time...I wasn't, I know was in better shape the second time and it did not reflect in a better time.

Most will complete a day hike 12 to 18 hours. It depends on conditioning, be able to a steady sustainable pace, being use to hiking at these elevation, how many pictures will you be taking and if you have a problem with AMS.

Last year was my first time on the MT and I left the Portal at 3:35am. I summitted at 10am and was back to the Portal by 3:45pm. I trained mostly cardio (biked to work everyday) and went on a few 5 mile hikes. A month ago I did the MR and made it from Portal to Summit in 6 hours and went down MT taking 4 hours and 10 minutes to make it back to the Portal. I was by myself and was really moving to make it back in that time. I would say that if you were in good shape and kept your rest breaks to a minimum..ie drinking water while walking... if you left the portal by 3:00am, you should summit between 10am and noon depending on your pace. The trail is free of snow so it should be pretty straight forward. I hope this helps.

Good luck.

Tim Le posted a link to the dayhiker.com site, and I think that for the most part, the 5 hours fast, 7-8 hours moderate and 10 hours slow is pretty good, except that I think he is a little on the fast end, and he is ignoring people who aren't really in good enough shape to be hiking Whitney but do it anyway. Far, far more people will be taking 10 hours or more than will be taking 5 hours or less, and taking well over 10 hours is not unusual. Of course, perhaps this is in part because far, far more people hike slow than hike fast.

Aside from what kind of hiking shape you are in (not just what kind of shape, but shape for hiking, in terms of hiking uphill, hiking downhill, and hiking long distance), and how acclimated you are (a huge variable for people on Whitney), there is the question of what kind of pace you normally hike at. Compared to most hikers, I would say that my preferred uphill pace is faster than average, and my preferred downhill pace is average or perhaps a little slower than average. Some people hike at a normal pace whereby, even if they are in really good hiking shape and well acclimated, they will take 8 or 9 hours from Portal to Summit.

My first attempt, I was in excellent hiking shape and well acclimated, I went solo so I set my own pace, and my dayhike time up Whitney was around 6 1/2 hours, including one somewhat lengthy break around Trail Camp for a little eating and drinking and Alpenglow watching. I really pushed the pace to make it down in 5 including a leisurely stop at the solar toilet (the idea of getting UP in 5 hours as dayhiker suggests is a fast pace seems REALLY fast to me). When going at the pace of others, I have gone in more like 8-9 hours up, down in 6 or 6 1/2, although some of the time I'm not sure I was in shape to do much better.

I know people who have taken 13 hours to get from Portal to Summit for a dayhike, but they have said they take plenty of rest stops and go really slow beyond Trail Crest. Even people who have done a lot of hiking at 10-12,000 feet to get acclimated will feel a noticeable difference above 13,000, and will have to slow down somewhat. People who aren't well acclimated usually have to REALLY slow down, so the switchbacks and the slog from Trail Crest to the summit can go REALLY slow for some people.

I'm not sure that one can say what is average. 11 hours seems slow to me for the average time of dayhikers, but 11 hours might be typical for the category of "slow but not unusually slow" dayhikers.

I had done enough hiking both long distance and at elevation before ever doing Whitney that I had a pretty good idea of what my time would be like. Whitney is a trail in the mountains gaining nearly 6,000 feet in 11 miles, going up to over 14,000 feet, and beyond that, there is nothing really unusual about the trail. If you have experience hiking at elevation with normal mountain hiking elevation gain and loss, including some longer hikes, you should be able to figure out what you will do on Whitney. If you haven't been as high as 14,000, if you mostly haven't gone over around 12,000, you need to add a little time for that higher elevation than what you would normally think for a hike like this, but other than that, pretty typical for hiking on a trail in the mountains. Based on my experience, first time up I figured about 2 miles per hour going up and add another hour for the high elevation (I had been up a 14,000 foot peak before, so I knew the effect of being that high even when well acclimated to 12,000 feet). I was pretty much dead on, because I know how I hike in the mountains, and knew from reading that Whitney was basically a trail.

Use your own experience to try to figure out what you can expect, but if you haven't had experience hiking long distancese at elevation, there are too many variables to know what you should expect.

Over the past five years I had taken various groups (12-15 hikers) with me to the top. I required a few training hikes with me so I could see the skill levels. These hikes were on the northen side of the Angeles NF that included hikes up to Baden-Powell and Baldy from Wrightwood. From this experience the time it takes to summit is weather dependent. On good years most of the hikers did the round trip in 10 to 12 hours, one year with an early hike date and high snow levels starting at Lone Pine Lake it took close to seventeen hours for all to return. As a cautionary note no one hikes alone and three people in a "hiking group" is better. This allowed the faster hikers to go ahead and the ones enjoying the surrounds more time to look around. Each group had at least one experienced hiker. I got the group started sometime between three and four a.m. Please remember the mountain will always be there if your group doesn't summit. Avoid mindless risks and return home safe.

This is a good point. If your training consist of actual, long distance high elevation gain hikes and you've been tracking your time, you should be able to predict your Whitney time pretty accurately. I was shooting for 7 hours but knew it might be 8 and had budgeted for 9. I fell in right at 8. If you live in SoCal, this page has some times for popular local hikes that you can compare to:

http://webpages.charter.net/mtwhitneyhiking/socalhikes.htm

He's pretty fast, but I can match the longer range of his times and my pace is fairly moderate. I just keep my stops to a minimum or none at all.

In your planning I would budget an extra hour for altitude effects and another hour for "maiden voyage effects." This means looking around in awe of everything, taking pictures and just savoring everything in. I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry, except at the start in the dark. You want to get up to Trail Camp as fast as you reasonably can so that you can see the sunrise alpenglow hit the upper peaks. This is a sight not to be missed! Also, budget in pee breaks because if you're hydrating well, you'll be in the bushes like once an hour.