I would have posted this earlier but I just got back from a week that included an attempt at Mt Whitney and then a few days hiking around Yosemite. Me and a friend camped out at the portal Monday night the 19th, planning to hike to trail camp the next day and then summit the next morning, needless to say things didn't go as planned.
We started out around 9 AM and it was really hot, I'd guess around 85-90 degrees. We took our time going up and took plenty of breaks to take off shoes, eat lunch, and drink water. When we got to mirror lake, the weather started to change, it got cold and really windy. By this point the altitude was affecting us both and slowed us down. We ended up getting to
this snowfield which I assume is pretty close to trail camp? I forgot to mention we were both wearing only trail running shoes, we didn't have crampons or ice axes and didn't want to bring them since neither of us is experienced enough with them and didn't want to do anything unsafe. So we waited there for a few minutes trying to decide what to do, I didn't want to attempt it since if you fell it was a long fall to some rocks below. As we waited a couple coming down the trail crossed it, and they both had hiking poles. About 2/3rds of the way across the lady out front nearly fell before catching herself, and that about clinched it for me, when they came by they said they had been planning on camping at trail camp but turned back due to 80 mph winds and it being around 16 degrees, and tents were getting blown away. So at that point we decided to turn back as well. We hiked back down to outpost thinking we could try to summit again the next day.
At outpost the winds were terrible, I don't know how bad they were, but one of us had to be in the tent at all times to keep it from blowing away. A combination of altitude sickness, the cold, and the winds kept both of us from sleeping a wink and we legged it back to the portal as soon as the sun came up.
I guess there has been new snow recently, but the day we went up we didn't even need to put on gaiters. Up to as far as we got, the parts that did have snow were packed down enough with steps kicked in that there was no post-holing, and a lot of the trail was snow-free.
All told, it was an interesting experience, I think next time I will try to do it all in one day, because trying to sleep at altitude was just awful for me, and I'd go later in the year when the weather is better. The change in weather in one day was amazing, but thankfully after reading here, something we were relatively prepared for. On the plus side, the trail made Half dome a few days later seem like a walk in the park. We only saw a few people over the 2 days so I guess a lot of permits went unused. I can sorta see why now
