Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Main Whitney trail conditions

Has anyone been up the main Whitney trail in recent days (not MR)? I am curious about the conditions of the trail. I have read Bob R's great post, and hope that my question here is taken for what it is, a simple query regarding the current conditions on the main trail (icy, slushy etc.), as subjective as that might be. I plan to start up the main trail Friday morning and would like to make Trail Camp by the end of the day. For what it's worth, I have an extensive background in hiking/peak bagging in the Sierra's, and I feel prepared for this trip, will not be going alone, have done Whitney before, respect the mountains, and trust myself to back off if things don't feel right, or are not going well.

Myself and two others did the main trail route this past weekend, summiting on Monday (April 18). From trail camp we skipped the switchbacks and went straight up the face to the right of the rock band that runs vertically up the face, exiting through a narrow chute onto the trail just below trail crest. Much of the trail is very managable, HOWEVER, there are sections of the trail that are completely covered in snow and ice yielding very trecherous sections. We encountered very sugary snow conditions as well as hard ice depending on the aspect and wind conditions the slope has faced. Crampons and ice axes are a must and depending on your skills, roped protection would be extremely helpful as the runouts below these sections if one were to fall are not pleasant. Some of the traverses, as I mentioned, were very trecherous and require extreme focus. Needless to say, when we returned to camp, we were all pretty relieved.

Thanks for the update. I was just out there on the 26th and 27th (just got home), and saw exactly what you describe. I was with one other person, and we spent the night of the 26th at Trail Camp. It was pretty windy, and never really cleared up overnight, but we decided to give it a try anyway the morning of the 27th. We climbed the snow field that morning, and the sky cleared up for a beautiful morning. We made the crest right where you did, and started around the back side. We only had crampons and ice axes, and we turned back just under a mile from the top when we encountered a very sugary slope covering the trail. I made the decision to turn back because we were moving pretty slow, and though it was only 11:00 am, we were not going to make it to the top before it started to snow, and we were tired from 5 days in the snow around Bishop prior to this attempt. It was a hard decision as the person I was with has never been on top of Whitney, but we have a permit set for the first week of October, and we figured it was better to come back for another try than to do something stupid and never have the chance. We still had a great time, and it was a learning experience that neither of us will ever forget.