My husband and I summited Mt Whitney Friday June 25 as a dayhike. We did it by the chute, which worked out great. There were several other groups after passing trail camp that didn't seem to have done much research on trail conditions. They all went up the switchbacks. Some seemed unprepared (wearing shorts and no extra clothing for higher up.) We took the chute, which has a nice steady climb to trail crest. The snow was pretty soft at 7am, crampons helped a lot in keeping a grip each step. We made it up the chute in 1 hour. After that, it was a slow walk to the summit. I never felt like I had altitude sickness, just felt very slow! There were several small snowfields to cross both below trail camp and one below the summit. Neither required special gear, but I highly recommend 2 trekking poles for this hike!
After summiting and spending about 30 minutes on top, we met started meeting the groups of hikers that took the switchbacks. I would say we were easily 2 hours ahead of them.
If the chute is there and you have the gear and experience, I would highly recommend that route. If not, I'm guessing there is a nice path through the snow up the switchbacks by now. On the 25th, almost everyone took that route except a few of us.
We are from Kansas (about 1,000 feet), but had spent a week in the mountains. Boundary Peak in Nevada was probably harder on us than Whitney (our first day), although much shorter and not as high. My feet were killing me by the time we made it back to the portal - I think this is a given any time you do this as a day hike.
Our training primarily consisted of intense workouts on the elliptical at they gym. My husband was doing 6 miles at fairly high settings in just over an hour. I was doing 30-40 minute interval training on the elliptical along with some weight training. I would alternate with some 3 mile runs.
We started our hike at 2am. Lost a little time during a brief snow storm. We sat for about 30 minutes as it was still dark and we didn't want to press on not knowing what the sky looked like. Turned out it cleared off pretty quickly staying partly cloudy for the day.
We summited around 10am, and down to the portal by 4:30. 14.5 hours total, some of that filtering water, changing clothes, crampons, etc.
We came down the chute, plunge stepping the top half, and glissading the bottom half. Do not glissade here without an ice axe and knowledge of how to use it. The snow was soft and hard to maintain control. It took a lot of resistance.
We each drank one liter of water from the portal to trail camp. Then each took 2 to the summit. We had about 1 1/2 liters between us when we made it back to trail camp. This lasted us until we were back at the portal. We could have filtered more any time below trail camp had we needed it. It was a cool day, which probably led us to drink less water than average, or than we should have.
Hope this help you. It's beautiful from trail crest up and a great summit. It's a long day, but I don't think snow will be a problem for you. Keep training! It will pay off.
