Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Ice situation on 10/7??

Hi all.

Did anyone summit today (Sat, 10/7)??
I'm wondering what the switchbacks looked like today. According to Tappdog, there was some snowfall on Friday afternoon. Prior to that, people were saying, aside from a few slick spots, the switchbacks were mostly passable. How much did that snowfall affect the switchbacks?

Hoping to go on Mon 10/9... Wanted to get the most current conditions.

THANKS

Hey, I summited yesterday (10/7). Until reading some posts today, I hadn't realized incredibly lucky my group was in being able to summit, with the snow early last week and rapidly changing conditions. We went up without crampons with the mindset that we could always turn around.

My group (of 2 others) began hiking at 4am (from portal), reached the switchbacks around 8-9, trail crest at 10, and summited at noon. We spent an hour recovering at the top (left at 1) and reached trail crest at 2:15. It was snowing heavily on the camp side of the crest, and we hiked out through snow all the way down to Lone Pine Lake (around 5:15). On the way up, the switchbacks were not bad (couldn't have used crampons - not enough snow/ice), except for one patch of ice by the cables. On the way down, the fresh snow helped our traction. We made it up and down with poles only, and others made it without poles. We did not have crampons.

Since we didn't stick around in the snow to be able to give a condition report, I can't tell you how the switchbacks will be on Monday. However, there is lots of fresh snow from yesterday afternoon, and I can only imagine it freezing. I doubt that anyone will even think about trying to get up there today without crampons, but I guess I don't know for sure. I have some pictures, if you can tell me a way to share them, or I can email them to you if you want.

Nice trip. Looks like you had a great time. Hope the summit is in the pictures next year.

Summited sat.10/07 at 11:30 am. It was beautiful and sunny but clouds were rolling in and I started down at 12:00. By the time I got to trail camp it was snowing. Got about 3-4 inches by the time darkness set in. Did'nt seem to hamper anyone the next morning. Saw plenty of headlamps going up the switchbacks. Pretty cold up there, water in my bottle froze inside my tent. Had to break ice at trail camp to get drinking water.Overall it was a pretty good trip. Got a lot of good pictures. Phil

It's been a long time since I camped out in really cold weather, but I'm hiking Mt. Whitney this weekend and camping at Trail Camp. I was curious about something. Say that I have a 0 degrees F sleeping bag and I keep my water-filled Nalgene inside my sleeping bag, will it still freeze? Let's just assume the temperature outside gets down to 0 degrees F.

Tri Ultras,

Are you going to be in the sleeping bag with the bottle of water?

Yes asbufra, I was planning on sleeping in the sleeping bag with the water-filled Nalgene in the bag with me. I realize of course, that my body heat in the sleeping bag would keep it as warm as possible, but at the same time it will rob me of body heat.

Or... warm the water on your stove first before putting it into the bottle and in your bag.

People do that to help stay warm when their bag is not warm enough.

Thanks to everyone for their replies.

My friend and I were able to summit yesterday (10/9). There was a good amount of snow (up to 6 inches) on the switchbacks, but it remained snow even into the late afternoon (i.e., it hadn't refrozen into ice). The only truly icy patch was at the cables. We were the only ones using crampons. The other ~7 people we saw on the switchbacks and beyond went without crampons and had no problems. So long as the snw doesn't ice over, it's fairly easy to hike w/out crampons, but better have them in case it ices up when you're up there!

Thanks again.