Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board hiking/biking white mountain fri, hike Whitney mon

Is it a good idea to try and hike White mountain/bike it, on a friday, then do the day hike on Whitney early Monday morning? Has anyone done this? Do the experts here think it is enough recovery time?

Opinions?

Thanks

It'll depend on your ability and physical conditioning, but it shouldn't be a problem. I've done Telescope Peak (Death Valley), then White Mountain two days later with no problems.

Cooldude
Have you biked White before...if so how was the adventure?

If I recall (I'm old, I forget!) I did Whitney/Muir a day after having ridden most of White a number of years ago.

How you'll feel two days later does depend on what kind of shape you are in.

Keep in mind that the some of the 4WD road up White requires really good technical skills on the bike if you don't want to do a bunch of hike-a-bike. I couldn't do it without walking. The last section to the summit is particularly tough and the downhill in the middle also had me off the bike for a while.

In 2005 my son and I drove the the Schulman Visitor Center on a Friday evening and biked most of the way to the locked gate. We intended to bike up White the next day. We ended up turning back at 13000+ feet due to building thunderstorms. We biked back to the Visitor Center. The next day we biked from Lone Pine to the Portal and back. The following day, Monday, we hiked Whitney. Except for the heat heading up from Lone Pine on the bikes on Sunday, the whole thing went very well.

Dude,

Everybody's body responds a little, or in some cases a lot different than others. In my experience my performance, i.e. strength and stamina at altitude, increases each day on multi-day outings. In other words, biking White Mountain could be a good acclimitization exercise for hiking Whitney. I biked the 7 mile stretch to White Mountain from the locked gate a few years ago. I had to walk and carry my bike about 50% of the way up. But I did ride 100% of the way down! Some of the riders in my group were able to ride more of the terrain on the way up. On the average for our group I think it took us about 5 hours to go up and about 1 hour to ride down. Your plan sounds like a fun trip, good luck! -Rick