Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Florence Pk via Farewell Gap

A friend and I were contemplating a ski acesnt/descent of Florence Peak within the next couple of weeks and I was wondering if anyone here knows if the current 56 inches of snow at the Farewell sensor (9500') might be enough to get us up farewell canyon on the skiis. Also, should we plan on the 7 mile ski up mineral king road or does anyone know if it's open. Just wondering about logistics here... Sorry for being off topic a bit but people here just seem to have allot of Sierra experience.

In mid-late April 1984, a snow year not unlike this one, we were able to ski about 5 miles to the Mineral King end of the road. It had snowed a few days before, though, and most of this new snow was melted by the end of this weekend. With 4WDs, then, we might have driven to a mile or two from the end of the road.

It was solidly snow-covered well up to Farewell Gap, then. But that same year, on Memorial Day weekend, the hike to Vandever Mountain was mostly bare.

I found the last few hundred feet to the summit of Florence was full of large talus and I had to turn back due to hazard of falling into a snow hole (solo). I wouldn't know if you'd have to worry about this in a few weeks, yet.

You may wish to plan a contingency extra day for skiing Florence. Seems with the still short days, the 5,000' gain from the summer road's end would take some time, and it is pretty steep to ski, with avy hazard as well.

Thanks for the info 4Xsummit...I'd rather pay the price of skiing up the road in exchange for firmer/more snow up high on Florence. My friend is comming down from Shasta so I hope the snow is still covering well, but this area has so much to offer that none of us will complain if we have to trade skis for boots. I'm curious as to the route you took to the ridge and the talus you mentioned. We were thinking off the south side of the Gap on day 2, then hitting Vandever on day 3..packing up and traversing up to Bullfrog lakes for the night...then skiing/climbing Florence fron the southern side. I've never seen this ridge up close in winter, but with the warming weather we are thinking early before things soften up. Plan B might be a route up the northeast side east of the face from the Franklin area. We have 5 days to play! We'll do some digging on a few aspects up the gap and on the backside...but thanks for the heads up on the avi potential. I knew there was a reason they wanted to build a ski resort up there.