Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Bear-Box Sizes?

A group of us hiked Whitney last year, and had a great time. We are headed up again next week for a July 2 summit, and 2 days of hanging around at Horseshoe/Cottonwood lakes to acclimate.

I'm trying to find out the actual sizes of the bear boxes in each of the common campgrounds. We are staying at LonePine campground and want to bring a cooler that will fit.

Lone Pine=?
Whitney Portal = 30" high, 34" deep, and 48 wide (replaced - 18x18x50) inches
Horseshoe Meadows = ?

Thanks
Jon

and I will add a related question about the boxes at WP:

how are they closed? just a simple latch, or is there a lock? key or combination? If no lock, then they are potentially communal usage.

are there any lockers with keys, sorta like they have in Curry Village, Yosemite?

been to Whitney three times, but this time will need to store stuff. Thanks for the info. Harvey

Jonny5? Would you be Jon S?

I tried to find the bear box size but it is not listed anywhere.

Chris "Gonna Rock Whitney" Zukowski

See the post WP Campground in the Orientation Notes thread. The boxes in the family campground are now as large as the boxes in the group campground (since about 2003). The information on the web site is incorrect.

You also can read about problems/misconceptions with the latches on Missing camera,

Thanks for the link, I updated my first post. But, do you know if the Lone Pine boxes are the same, I could swear that the boxes up in Whitney Portal were smaller, but maybe I only saw the ones for hikers, and I know that the ones up at Horseshoe were smaller. (probably the 18x18x50).

The Nut/Wrench did not cause any problems for us last year, but i'd love to see a bear open a properly closed box.

The the 18x18x50 boxes were the original boxes in the family campground, so I assume that they were installed all over the area. I have not stayed at Lone Pine Campground, but I know that the smaller boxes were in Onion Valley. I would expect the less busy campgrounds (like LP) to still have the small boxes.

Jon
The boxes at Horseshoe Meadows are approx. the size you described for the boxes at MWP...the original size...they are good size and will hold a number of good size coolers. I had a 48 quart cooler as did my partner and we shared the box with 2 other camp sites...there was enough room for all of us.
Ed