How hard is it to pick up the Whitney Portal trail from the lot in front of the barrier?
Looking at the online maps, the "Whitney Portal National Recreation Trail" is about 200 meters from that parking area. Here's a link to a gmap4 map of the area, showing the satellite view. If you click the "t4" map, you can see the trail marked.
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?ll=36.594954,-118.204483&z=16&t=sIf you switch back and forth between "satellite" (aka Aerial Google Satellite) mode to the "t4" (aka Topo high USA), you can see how to find the trail from the parking lot. The parking lot is the gray area above and left of the crosshairs, and the NRT is below the crosshairs.
Thinking more about it, by the time you bushwhacked or whatever to find the WPNRT, it would be a lot easier and faster just to walk up the road. In fact, Jeff in
this trip report reported it took him 1:45 to push his bicycle loaded with all his gear up to the trail head. Kurt Wedberg reports it takes his clients about 2 hours to walk up.
