Steve:

Good catch on the camera time still being on Eastern time. Yeah..I am afraid the boy is now taller than me. I am sure I will be hearing about that for a while.

As to your questions on which resources helped me the most, I really think it was just more the general info I gained from the board. Without the Orientation Notes and advice from a few guys on the board, I do not think the trip would have ever happened. I knew we had to have permits for Whitney and would imagine that without the board I would have probably called Inyo Ranger office only once, found out permits were unavailable for the dates I could consider, and likely punted. By reading the board I learned a great deal more about the permit process, "no shows", etc. I also learned about camping at Horseshoe Meadows from the board as I would have likely just camped at the Portal without this resource. This may have been fine, but with only 24 hours to acclimatize HM was probably helpful.

On route finding....the North Fork/MR is pretty easy to follow. I consider myself fairly decent with a topo map and compass, but I never pulled either out. The description from Doug's book was very good and the trail was easy to follow from the split with the main trail to the ledges. I found Bob Rockwell's photos of the ledges, (found on the MR link), to be very helpful, but I think I would have been fine without them as the route up through the ledges is pretty intuitive as long as you know you are heading up toward the wall. The trail from the ledges to LBSL is easy to follow and and the route from LBSL to UBSL and on to Iceberg Lake is really well marked with cairns. I did get slightly off route once but quickly figured out I was off the preferred route and immediately found a cairn and got back on the trail. There are a couple of places near Iceberg where you have to pay attention as there are several "use trails" that go off in different directions. You really can't get messed up too bad though. If you haven't seen a cairn for a couple of minutes, look around or perhaps back track and you will find one. The last little section up to Iceberg Lake does require a bit of a scramble, but not bad.

From Iceberg Lake you certainly can't miss the MR Gully. In Doug's book he recommends taking the 3rd class chute to the left of the main gully as this allows you to avoid a significant chunk of the lower scree filled gully, (and rock fall). As I mentioned in my trip report, for some reason I thought the 3rd class chute traversed over hard right at some point to join the main gully. I don't have a clue where I got this bad info from as the line is very obvious if you know to just follow the left chute up until it meets the main gully. I am sure I would have figured it out, but that was about the time Jim F. came by, so we just followed him. At the risk of being repetitive, the final 400' is easy, but exposed. The single hardest move might be the first move or two off the deck at the notch, but they aren't hard. Just be careful picking your way around the ice and keep heading up the path of least resistance. Obviously my route beta is only valid for summer conditions.

Perhaps people from California and Nevada learn enough about Whitney from friends and other local sources to "figure it out", but for a guy trying to plan a trip from his living room on the other side of the country, the board was invaluable.

Thanks to all who put in the hard work to make this kind of resource possible!

Kent Williams