My brother, two cousins, and I attempted to bike from Badwater to Whitney Portal and then climb Whitney on the 8th - all in under 24 hours.
We left Badwater at 7pm on Friday, and arrived at Whitney portal at 8 am on Saturday, after biking 135 miles and gaining a total of about 15,000 feet. The ride went relatively well, except that I threw up four times going up Towne's Pass and got very cold descending Panamint pass.
At the portal, we were joined by 6 more friends. Unfortunately, we didn't get on the trail till 10 am because we took way to long to eat, sort out gear, etc. We decided that we should take four winter sleeping bags, two tents, pads, etc. in case of emergency.
By 2 pm, we realized that our goal of reaching the summit was unrealistic considering the trail conditions. We were loaded down too much with our gear (some of us had 40-50 lb packs), and the progress of our group slowed to a crawl by Trail Camp. All the reports of hikers coming down the trail were very pessimistic about the conditions from the switch backs up. Several hikers claimed that there were "waist deep" snow drifts from trail crest to the summit. We didn't have snowshoes, so this didn't sound too fun. We were prepared to hike down the entire mountain in the dark, but considering the conditions on the upper mountain, we decided that the summit will just have to wait till next year.
Here are a couple of photos of the trip:
Please don't use these pictures / post them elsewhere with out permission. Thanks.
