Given the steepness of the Old Trail, the only real advantage is when you are returning to the Portal and going down the trail. I don't see any advantage in going up it when you are heading up the trail at the beginning of your hike.
p1

CaT


If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracle of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.
- Lyndon Johnson, on signing the Wilderness Act into law (1964)