Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Light main trail use this year?

This last week I took a group of scouts from Horseshoe Meadow over to Portal. One thing that I noticed is that there were far fewer people on the trail than what I saw last year. Guitar Lake didn't have a lot of tents on Thursday night, and Outpost camp only had a half dozen tents on Friday night. We summited at 8:30 AM on Friday, and on the way down we encountered about half the number that I saw when I descended last year in August. And there were only about 20 packs at the trail junction below the summit when we descended; last year I saw at least twice that many at about the same time of the day.

The question is - are there fewer people on the mountain this year, or was it a fluke of timing? I was expecting hordes like usual, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

I don't know what normal is but when I went on 6/20/07 we saw less than 10 people total on the trail from outpost camp to summit and back.With the big deal made about getting a permit via a lottery only to be denied due to being "full". Getting denied a second time on the 2nd application process I was under the impression that it would be people everywhere on the trail.I am not sure if lots of people just no showed this year or what.

It may be a stupid suggestion..but perhaps gasoline prices are causing people to re-think a long drive out to Lone Pine? I know we think carefully now about where we are going even out east here..if we are going to drive 4 hours in the XTerra at 19 MPG it adds up..

Chris

We don't have the numbers for this past Friday, but if you check the Unused Whitney Permits - 2007 thread, on the past three Fridays, there were an average of 6 unused overnight permits (or 54 used), and 21 unused dayhike permits (or 79 used). So if this past Friday was average, you should have seen about 130 hikers on the trail. Spread out over 11 miles, that is only a dozen in any one mile stretch, or maybe 25 an hour.

I think it would be interesting for someone to carefully count the number of people they meet in a day on the trail, and then ask others in the group afterwards to estimate how many they encountered. I am curious whether actual numbers and perceived numbers vary much.