Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Recent conditions?

Does anyone have anything to report on conditions the last few days? I'm particularly interested in what things are like on north facing slopes about 12K (like the switchbacks). Hard? Soft? Breaking through crust? Inquiring minds want to know...

I would definitely recommend crampons. The snow on most aspects is very hard and not fun without points. Sun-protected northern slopes at 12K are generally bootable, but crampons are still nice for hard patches. Post-holing is minimal except around buried rocks and trees. Overall, solid footing with no need for snow shoes.

Cool, and thanks for the useful info. How long ago did you find those conditions, and did it soften up in the afternoon? When you say "hard", do you mean wind scoured hard, or frozen corn hard?

Those were the conditions I experienced yesterday in the Kearsarge area, and they were identical to conditions two weeks ago in the Palisades area. Yesterday, the snow softened in sun exposed areas below 10K, but stayed hard above that level. The snow was frozen corn to maybe 11K where sun had previously managed to melt. Above that level the snow was wind scoured. Yesterday's extreme winds were dumping a lot of spindrift into north facing chutes.

Hey Steve,

I just got back from Whitney (Fri/Sat) and found wind scoured snow starting above LBSL. I was traversing above the lake (below Thor) around 11am and after arresting about a dozen short slips, finally put my crampons on. We found similar conditions the entire way up, nearly all of the snow was very hard pack. There were some areas of melt/freeze but mostly a lot of wind scouring. By late afternoon south facing areas had some nice corn, but everything else was still fairly hard packed.

Marmoting: Were you able to drive to Onion Valley? Is the road open?

The road is not officially open, but is not gated either. There is considerable rockfall on the road, but nothing that cannot be driven around to at least the 7100 ft level. I only drove as far as the mining road on the hairpin at 7100 ft since the mining road was the start of my hike. There was no snow on the road at that level. I would guess you should be able to drive at least 0.7 miles further to a major avalanche chute. If that is melted out you should be able to make it considerably further.

Thanks marmoting - I appreciate the info.

Hey marmoting, any chance you have photos from the Kearsarge area?

These were taken from Pk 12720 which is WNW of Kearsarge Pk. The first is taken looking SW with University on the left and Gould on the right. The second is taken looking west toward Dragon Pk.

Awesome, thanks!! Planning on heading up to University (North Face), Dragon looks good too. I kind of want to do Dragon now since looks like there is more snow on Dragon. What would you guys do?

Ummmm... Both.

But probably not on the same day. I'll leave that to Rick Kent. He should throw in Kearsarge Peak as well to make a nice loop.

-L