Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Do I need a free standing tent?

Hi,

I'm trying to get ready for doing Mt. Whiitney this summer (Aug). Do I need a free standing
tent or will my trusty SD Clip Flashlight CD work? I'm looking at main Whitney route or maybe
the circumnativatiion one. If I do the main route, I would be camping at Trail Camp.

Thanks,

matt

I doubt that there will be any snow at Trail Camp, even after this snowy El Nino winter. I think your tent will probably work fine. I assume that you have a warm sleeping bag? 0 degrees would be preferred.

Misha

In July, 2001, we used my non-free-standing Walrus tent. Worked fine, with a little creative use of rocks where we couldn't get stakes into the "ground" (sand/rocks) at Trail Camp.

We were comfortable overnight in normal summer-weight (30-degree) bags, but both my son and I sleep fairly warm. Temps never got down to freezing at Trail Camp, although the seeps across the trail in the Switchbacks had a little ice on them in the morning.

Check out my trip report under the "highpointing" section of my WWW site, http://www.mtritter.org

...happy trails!!

The areas around and above Guitar Lake will be ok for your Clip Flashlight.

Alan's answer about Trail Camp comports with convention wisdom for this area. There are some sites up at Trail Camp you can just stake the tent but you have to be prepared to be creative just in case you don't get one.

Bill

http://pahlow.net/albums/Whitney/index.html

That's a SD Clip Flashlight in these pics. Worked just fine at Trail Camp. Depending on the site, some stakes will go in, some won't. If they don't just tie off to a rock. The wind blew hard the night we were ther but no problems with the tent.

If you plan on staying at Trail Camp, there are an abundance of rocks to tie your tent stays to. I found the best way was to tie the stays to small, flatish rocks and wedge them under heavy (20-30 lb) rocks. This uses less cord and makes tensioning easy. I'd also suggest you "rock your tent"--at least a 20 lb rock in each corner when you're away summiting if there are storms or gusty winds about.