Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board 2017 Early June Horseshoe to Whitney Exit

I'm planning a trip for the second week in June. I think Cottonwood Pass will be the first to melt out and I plan to take PCT to Crabtree Meadows to stay as low as possible to avoid snow travel. I'm looking for a message board that the PCT hikers post to that I could look for old reports from early season passages. I'm sure I will have to look earlier than June to account for the 250% snow this year.

I'm also looking for recommendations for equipment to be used for the Guitar Lake to Trail Crest ascent this year?

Can anyone give me an idea of what I might be faced with on the west side this year? I imagine there will be a snow shoot down the east side from Trail Crest down to Trail Camp. Does anyone know what the ascent might look like on the West side? I hope that during the second week of June, we will not be the first to make the ascent in the snow. Do early season snow ascents typical cut a straight line, or do they carve out something similar to the 7 west side switchbacks from Guitar Lake to Trail Crest?

Just checking in again to see if anyone got any photos of the John Muir ascent from Guitar Lake this weekend. I'm trying to see if there has been a recent ascent that has cut a line either straight up or in switchbacks to Trail Crest from the West.

I would also like to see where the snow elevation is on the west side from Cottonwood Pass to Lower Rock Creek and up to Guitar Lake.

It's a little too early to tell how that is going to look in the 2nd week in June. That's still 6 weeks out. It'll depend on what the weather does over the next month.

At this point you should be prepared for snow travel. It will probably mostly follow the trail. But again it's still too early to tell. You should check back later this month.

Horseshoe Meadows road is washed out and very closed - gates locked at the bottom. No ETA when Inyo will be able to fix it - so you may have to hike up the road all the way! Check with Bishop office -

Horseshoe meadow road now open all the way to the TH.