With this heavy snowfall this late in the year, the Whitney trail is pretty much a snowshoe hike at this point. Only a few hardy souls will be heading up. What usually occurs is that people will start up, then lose the trail and head off in various directions, resulting in many spur tracks to nowhere.
Once the trail is snowed under like this, winter hikers take over, and most will head up the steeper and more direct North Fork of Lone Pine Creek -- the Mountaineers Route. Many people will go with commercial mountain guides (SMI is one) in the winter, especially in the late winter months.
Beware if you go: Storm forecasts sometimes under-predict the level of snow. Two guys were lucky to be rescued from the North Fork area on Nov. 24. If not for the helicopter rescue, it is questionable they would have survived. Here's that thread: Recent SAR Ops
The trail head structure from the same set of pictures:
