Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Permit System Campsite Changes?

Hello,

We have our overnight permit for 9/3 staying at Outpost. We’re wondering if we’re feeling up to it the day of, can we continue on to Trail Camp and stay there instead? I couldn’t find out if we can change campsites on the rec.gov site and couldn’t get through to anyone at the ranger station to ask.

And if you have feedback on which place we should stay at I’m all ears. Most of the 8 in our group are not experienced backpackers, but are all avid hikers.

Thank you :-)

It has been numerous years since I did the beast from the east side, much better experience from the west but of course you need more days to do it. Unless they specifically state on your permit that you have to stay at outpost then I think you can camp at trail camp. Now having said that outpost camp still might be the better option anyway, lower elevation, trail camp is at 12k, not easy to sleep at that elevation especially if you’re coming up from sea level. You stated that your group isn’t experienced bpackers, another reason to stay at outpost. If you’re then day hiking to the summit figure it might add 2+ hours to the trip instead of staying at trail camp. Good luck and have fun

I only consider those campsite locations an estimate. They may be useful to some agency in some sort of data gathering effort or if trying to determine where a missing hiker might be. Often the predefined options are not where I intend to camp so I select something close. Any number of conditions or situations would lead to a greater number of miles or less number of miles to be traveled on a given day yielding a different location than was planned.