Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Mt. Whitney Main Trail Day Hike - October 20, 2007

Given the few reports that I've read recently, I was expecting this to be an EPIC...

It was, but not for the reason I was expecting. All of the weather forecasts I read/heard stated that the winds were supposed to taper off on Saturday. The local radio station's forecast called for the High Wind Waring to expire at 8:00am.

Mike (GigaMike) and I headed up at about 5:30am (Damn, I slept thru the alarm again! Mike had to wake me up.) expecting that by the time we made Trail Camp, the winds would have died down some. It didn't happen and two lightweights spent most of the day trying to stay on the ground.

There were a lot of people out-and-about, but I don't think many made the summit on Saturday.

The summit register box is in dire need of some new pages.

As we past the WPS a little after six, we said hello to Earlene. I stated that we missed out on having a Burger Plate and need to learn to climb a little faster. We may have missed out on having one last burger. It's going to be a long wait until May '08! Bummer.

Conditions:

There was relatively little snow left on the trail considering that I read somewhere about "waist deep drifts."

As Tom says: "Carry your axe. It's good training weight." We didn't use them.

We also carried crampons/clapons. We used them on the way down. Although we thought we could make it down without, we were both tired and having them on made the descent past the cables go a bit faster. (Side note: My new Black Diamond aluminum 10-points are cool! Light! Very easy to mount.)

Photos are at: http://piotrowski.smugmug.com/gallery/3686698

My goodness, where is the snow and ice??
I am planning a trek up the main trail this Saturday. I was planning to bring crampons, ice axe, balaclava, etc.

Can I assume that water was readily available, not frozen over?

Can you offer any advise or a time line of your ascent/descent?

Great photos and thanks for the report!

I wouldn't go up without any of the typical winter tools. You may not need them, but you certainly don't want to be without if you do.

It was COLD with the wind blowing as hard as it was. This was the first time that I can think of that I was wearing a fleece cap all day long. I never was able to switch to my typical baseball hat and bandana.

My guess is 7 1/2 hours up; 5 hours down. We took about 2 hours of breaks on the way up.

Water was available up to Trail Camp. We broke thru some thin ice at the inlet to the Trail Camp Pond.

Attempted the climb on Saturday and turned back at Trail Crest around 1300 to be sure to return to Outpost Camp by dark.

Concur on these points. I descended without crampons and hit an icy spot on the trail and had to self arrest with my ice axe. There was only 4-6 inches of packed snow on the trail, I got complacent with the easier than expected conditions and paid for it. So, as Snail said, take your gear and use it while you appreciate the easiER conditions.

Richard,

Thanks for the trip report and congratulations on making the summit under extreme wind conditions.

What a difference a day makes. The following day (Sunday 10/21) my partner and I enjoyed near perfect fall conditions on the Mountain. (A little residual wind on the summit was well tolerated.)

For those considering heading up the next few days:

(1) It appears the fine weather will persist according to the WPS Weather link.

(2) The WPS served its last meals for the year Saturday 10/20.

(3) The Whitney Portal Campground closed today 10/22. (There were only two of us camping there last night.) Over the weekend there were many open sites at the Walk-In Camp.

(4) Knowing in advance that the Summit Register was on life support (only a single completely filled page existed yesterday), yesterday in the Whitney Summit register box I left a simple "temporary register" that I assembled a couple of days ago at home. It consists of a few sheets of blank paper which I stapled together. Subsequently, I observed that people did sign it! Hopefully, the Forest Service resupplies soon.

Good luck on your climbing adventures, Jim