Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board We made it!

Four of us made the summit of Whitney on Saturday, January 18. Keith, Walter and Dan from Ridgecrest,and Roger from San Diego. Our fifth companion, Curtis, was not feeling well and turned around at Keeler Needle. It looked like we might have been the first ones up there since November.
We parked about 100 yards below the Meysan Lakes parking area and headed up at 0720 on Friday. We were at Trail Camp at 1250. We brought snowshoes but didn't really need them going up. On Saturday we headed up about 0630 and were on the summit by 1030. We used crampons and ice-axes on the ascent to Trail Crest. On the back side we used ice-axes a few times, but never needed crampons. We were back to Trail Crest by 1215 and the glissade down was great! Roger put on a fantastic show with his snowboarding all the way from Trail Crest back to Trail Camp! We packed up, left camp at 1340 and were back to our cars about 1545. I wore my snowshoes some on the way down. This was my 49th time on the summit, so I got to match my age, again.
We have six friends who hope to summit today, so now there should be a nice path from Trail Crest to the summit until the next storm. Oh yeah, some British guy named "Peter" plans on running to the summit today! We saw him on Friday. He ran up as far as Mirror Lake before he had to turn around. Just running shorts and a light top and shoes, like he was out on a summer jog! Good Luck, Peter!

Congratulations Walter!!!
From what I hear you're definately in the minority this Winter. Lot's of folks have been bailing on the summit. How was the portal road? Slides? Lots of snow? You went up the Whitney trail correct? Was anyone on the mountain who went up the MR? Please provide any details that you already haven't. We're going the last week in February. Thanks.

The portal road was easily negotiable with 4WD and no chains to just before the Meysan Lakes TH. There were rocks on the road but lots of room to get around them; snow wasn't bad.

We did go up the trail (i.e. over Trail Crest). There were a fair number of tracks leading up the North Fork. Don't know if anyone was on the MR while we were there. There were no entries in the summit register since late-Nov. of 2002.

Some pictures at:

http://members17.clubphoto.com/keith671521

Unfortunately I was having problems with my camera and didn't get any pictures after about 3/4 of the way back to Trail Crest from the summit. In particular, I didn't get any shots of Roger snowboarding down from Trail Crest. I'm pretty sure that Curtis did though.

Las,
Thanks! As Keith pointed out we could see tracks at the start of the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek. But at the summit I did not see anyone camped at Iceberg Lake and I did not see any trail coming up to Iceberg Lake. My assumption is no one has made the summit from the mountaineers side so far this year.
Good Luck on your trip. Last year it was so dry I was able to do a day hike of Whitney up the mountaineers at the end of February!

To comment on Keith's chagrin at not getting pictures of Roger snowboarding, I did!

Actually mine are videos. My digital camera can take 15 - 20 seconds of videos, with sound. I have three successive clips of Roger as he went shwooshing by us. I also used the video feature when I descended from Trail Crest the next day, aiming the camera down toward my feet as I glissaded. (Interesting holding the camera, with both hands on my ice ax!)

The video shots are neat, but I don't know how I could post them. I guess that people interested will just have to come over to my house, draw up a chair and a cool one, and watch them on my TV screen.

Hey Bob, as a point of curiousity, did you have any problems with rapidly depleting batteries for your digital camera? Did you just leave them in the camera, or did you store them next to your inner core, to keep them from getting below freezing?

I think you'd need a good website set up to display the movie clips. Some special software is needed, too, I think. I've got tons of movie clips I'd like to post, but I'm too poor. Also, an uncompressed 5 second clip runs about 2MB downloads (maybe 10-20 minutes), which most people won't wait for. You can easily e-mail a short clip with some systems, but again many people will suspect a virus coming in and cut off the loading (?).

Your pictures looked great and were very informative for me. A winter summit sounds like what I'd like to try. I imagined the snow-bound crest trail was too dangerous by one photo I saw. It now looks like good fun!

Keep up the great work, and try some tech support maybe for the movie clip problem. I've seen a few sites that offer this, and one download was over 5 (?) MB for a 2 minute movie!

Keith,
Great pictures! Looks like you guys were blessed with great weather. Was sorry to hear that it appeared no one was on the MR. Can't imagine breaking trail all the way up that beast. The only thing worse is not getting far enough up the portal road but it appears as though that's one thing we won't have to worry about at the end of February. The Whitney trail is looking better and better to me...Great Job! Be well

A note on cameras. I wrap my digital camera in bubble wrap, then stuff it into the carrying case after that and keep it close to my body. That way shocks and cold stay away. Especially important on a camera that uses smartmedia, which is flimsy.

Vince