Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Facing West to climb East

Facing West to climb the East Buttress: 5-24-09

I realized that we were facing west the whole time we were climbing the East Buttress route.....strange but true

Marty and I were planning on climbing the East Face route on Whitney, but several snow patches (between towers 1 & 2 and higher up on the Grand Staircase) were melting. So we decided to climb the drier East Buttress route instead.

We got an early start (4am) to improve our chances of avoiding the t-storms that had been pestering the Sierra and White mountains all weekend. We lucked out and had great weather the whole day. The rest of the details are embedded in this photo album.
http://grahamcracker.myphotoalbum.com/view_album.php?set_albumName=album159

Another great day on Whitney with great company!

Cheers,
Rick Graham

Rick,

Great photos. We climbed the East face last year, and cant wait to climb the Buttress this summer. I need to get a less unwieldy camera so I can get more shots.

C2C with time for dinner, THEN a sunset is impressive.

Brady

Very nice photo-set! I am as excited as ever now for my East Buttress attempt next week. My only dilema is whether to camp at UBS or Iceberg??? Pros and Cons to both. Not going the C2C approach...

Nice work, Rick! Sure wish I had a nephew like Marty--you wanna trade?

Dave

Beautiful climb - congratulations.
We just missed you on Sunday as we came down from Cottonwoods.

Outstanding, GrahamCracker! What a great day.

<drool function on>
Mmm... East Buttress...
<drool function off>

-L

Thanks all for the nice remarks!

- SW, I use a Canon SD1100 that fits nicely into a Crumpler Bundle Camera Bag (REI). Clipped with a carabineer, I can carry this kit on my harness.

- P-Nut, Good luck this weekend. Sorry I can’t help offer any useful advice on whether to camp at UBSL or Iceberg (I haven’t camped at either…matter of fact I don’t camp period. Just rough it car camping or motels). I can say that currently UBSL does have flowing water, which should help minimize the snow melting routine. Iceberg Lake is still frozen.

- Dave, in spring conditions like this it’s a pain to carry an ice axe and have it scraping against the rock the whole day only to use it for a 20 min glissade in the afternoon…….any tech wizardry or ideas on a small glissade tool?

-Tcat, sorry I missed you on Sunday. From Whitney it looked like the Cottonwood area was getting some serious rain.

- L, the East Buttress is surprisingly not that difficult. I’m sure you could do it. Just some route finding, a slabby crux (around pitch #2-3), doing a few pull-ups on the blocks up around 14K…..oh yeah…that sucking air & breathing thing…..I seem to remember a lot of that

Cheers,
RickG

We camped just below the headwall under Iceberg near UBS a couple weeks ago. While this lengthened summit day it was only by a little, and more than made up for by reduced toting of heavy packs up to Iceberg. While Iceberg was frozen there was melt-off during the day and thus water to be had.