I took a short hike up the Whitney Portal Road this morning during a lull between the predicted storms to get a first hand look at conditions: SNOW! Through brief breaks in the clouds, I could see that the upper gullies on all the surrounding peaks are smooth and heavy with new snow. Severe avalanche conditions should persist until mid-week at least above 9,000 ft.
Parked the car just at snowline at about 6,000 ft. (about 200 yards below the road closure point). Small snow flakes were falling all morning - blown down canyon from mean looking clouds spilling over the Sierra Crest. Temperature was 24 deg. F. at 8:00am, and warmed up to well above freezing by 10:00am. Snow depth on the road increases to about 2 1/2 feet at the Meysan Lake trail where I turned around due to post-holing (bare boot today).
I ran into the Surreal Summit team just below the Meysan Lake trail turnoff. They were doing fine, having weathered the blizzard last night. They were packing up to head back down to Lone pine to dry out and prepare for a return for an attempt on the Mountaineers route on Monday (I hiked down to the cars with them - the group is from all over the U.S. and Canada).
Some captioned photos are here:
http://dougforbes.smugmug.com/gallery/4116814#240079844Climb Hard, Climb Safe
Hedgehog
