Mt Whitney Zone Forums Trip Reports 2011-6-11: Day hike and Snow blindness!

(Topic changed from "Current Conditions: Mt Whitney Trail)

Hi All!
We made it - day hiked Mt Whitney on 6/11!
Thanks to everyone for posting - you all helped tremendously.
A couple of things we learned that might help regarding current conditions:
1) Wear sunglasses/snow goggles. I did for a little bit, but they got uncomfortable and I stowed them. I am not used to dealing with snow conditions, so I am an idiot. Result: snow blindness set in about 6 hours after we finished our hike. This condition is so painful I could not sleep. I could not see well enough to drive. Even now, two days later, I can barely see well enough to post. This situation is entirely preventable.
2) Training: I was grateful for every minute I spent training. I trained hiking Piestewa, Camelback (Phoenix) and Black (Cave Creek) mountains every weekend for about two months (did more than one back-to-back and in 100+ degree heat for the last couple of weekends). I also put in some longer hikes (20-30 miles) in the last two months, and hiked two 12,000 ft peaks in Flagstaff. Everyone in our group did this and we had no problem whatever with the effort required. However, we followed the recommendations and hiked MUCH slower than we might have otherwise. I am really glad we did. We won't be able to say we hiked Mt. Whitney in record time, but we all made it, and NO altitude sickness in our group.
3) Water: you need at LEAST 4 liters to make the trek for someone my size (120 lbs), 5 to 6 would be better if you are larger. Yes, you can get water on the trail but some of the locations on the water map are currently frozen. We were prepared to filter / add chlorine tabs to it, but we did not. One of our group traded the weight of water for a heavy camera without telling the rest. We bypassed a lot of water sources thinking this fellow had enough water. This was a grave error.
Luckily, he told us at Trail Camp and we found a snow-melt runoff, but this was a point of failure that could have been avoided. By the time we could rectify the situation, the guy was already a bit dehydrated, which made the rest of the trip much tougher for him than it might have been. The best preventative for AMS is SLOW speed and more-than-adequate hydration.
4) You only need crampons for the chute between Trail Camp and Trail Crest. You DO need an ice axe to stay safe if you slip. Stopping is HARD if you slip on something that steep.
5) The backside after the junction with the John Muir Trail was seriously scary for me. I have a trick ankle and a trick knee that give out (occasionally) without any warning at all. If I'd lost my footing on some of those sketchy spots (there were three on Saturday 6/11) and was not able to catch myself immediately, there would have been a very bad outcome. I was seriously doubting the sanity of what I was doing and worked my way VERY slowly and carefully (three points of contact) through those sections. That was by far the hardest part of the hike for me. I nearly turned back. I guess I am glad I hung in there but I would never take anyone who is affected by AMS, dehydrated, or physically challenged (like me with my trick ankle/knee) through those sections in the snowy conditions without some kind of safety gear. I had a great time, and the scenery was epic, but I am very glad I did not take Scouts or Venture Crew members on this day hike under current conditions.
6) Waypoints/Route finding: I programmed waypoints into my GPS from the https://sites.google.com/site/mtwhitneytrailinfo/MtWhitneyTrail/waypoints site and used them. This helped confirm that the boot tracks we were following were headed in the right direction. Doug Sr. at the Whitney Portal Store was a huge help showing us visually where we were headed using the big photo on the store wall. We picked up smaller versions of the big photo at the Portal Store and found ourselves using that more often than the topos and GPS.
7) Boots: three of us wore low-cut waterproof hikers by Merrill and Keene. These worked fine. One wore Lowa boots. We all wore gaiters and were glad to have them: we were able to march over the snow on the way up but the snow was quite soft on the way down. Gaiters kept snow out of our boots the whole way.
8) Socks, gloves: I have primary Raynaud's Syndrome (fingers and toes go numb and white under stress and even mild conditions) and was quite concerned about getting cold and wet. I borrowed ski gloves and wore wool socks and they worked great. I had a backup plan for everything but the ski gloves were perfect and I didn't need neoprene socks or plastic bags liners for the feet. I was sure glad I had gaiters, though!


Despite all the warnings, this was a fantastic journey and I am just delighted we got to do it!
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/annetteheinemeyer/sets/72157626822818633/

Thanks for the great report, Annette!

So sorry you got that snow-blindness. I sure hope there isn't any permanent damage.

I have heard similar stories about people hiking over the snow on Whitney and NOT using sun block. They have similar outcomes.

All I can say from this picture is... OUCH!



Great picture of you and Doug

Hi Annette,

Thanks for the great TR, and thank you VERY much for directing me to that site with the GPX files for the MMWT route. I'll enjoy playing with that in my Garmin when we go in early July. Congrats on a great trip!

Annette,
Great job and great trip report. You certainly did your training and homework and it paid off well. It is good to listen to the advice of experience when climbing Whitney. Congrats to you and your group as you enter an elite group that summited Whitney.You also did it under very difficult circumstances and conditions this being a very late and high snow level year.

Kevin,
Hopefully these pictures will help you out with your decision:
http://imageshack.us/g/12/img0930gl.jpg/

tdtz,
I added a picture for you in the link above as well. As you can see, LPL is not frozen.

Annette,
I wish I saw you up there and surprised I didn't at the same time. Yes, AMS is the primary reason I take my fine time. It hits me hard even at 10,000 ft. THANK YOU for pointing out the dangers after Trail Crest. People keep pointing to the chute, but I was never scared on that thing. It was quite frankly fun. I knew I could stop any slide with my axe. A slip on the backside would have been ugly with or without an axe. Experienced hikers like a Steve or a Bob may be able to tap dance back there, but my trip reports are for us regular folks. Slip on the chute and you'll curse yourself for having to crawl back up, slip after Trail Crest and your mangled body will get picked up by a chopper.

Burchey,
That would be awesome. I'm thinking about August or September when the snow is clear and the weather is fine. I don't have a set date yet as my trips are dictated by my travel schedule at work, but I'll be in touch...and I don't bail out on trips. ...but don't expect me to travel at warp speed or hang onto cliffs by the tip of my ice axe. Just managing expectations, hahaha. I better not see you doing anything like this in your Ranier TR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-dPjDYVKUY

Thanks all for the great reports!
Could you, 2600, or Annette please elaborate on the dangers after Trail Crest? What are the sketchy spots like? Why is it especially treacherous? Have a permit to head up in a few weeks and think its probably best to start mentally preparing for the hard parts.

Hi Sunshine,
Like 2600fromatari, the chute did not scare me going up. It is steep but if you have crampons and an ice axe you can stop yourself quite well.

I was much more scared of glissading too fast on the chute when headed down on the way back. The snow was way soft and crampons seemed almost more dangerous than glissading on the descent in the afternoon. I gingerly picked my way over to a route on the south side that did not end on the rocks at the bottom. Glissading slowly made the most sense to me since I don't have a lot of upper body strength and wasn't sure I could break myself effectively at higher speeds. So, I went slowly down the chute, ice axe planted and ready to lever up as a break. There were a couple of times I felt like I was going too fast and the axe wouldn't catch when I levered up (the snow was that soft). I discovered I could create a wedge of snow that would stop me by separating my feet and digging in my heels. I know you can also flip over onto your belly to self-arrest, covering the handle of the ice axe and digging in your toes, but this didn't seem practical to me in the conditions we had. Maybe that would work better in harder snow. In any case, I got down the chute okay, slowly, mostly in good control, but not without fear and cursing. Seriously, it was not as bad as it looked but I would not recommend trying to enjoy the glissade opportunity until the rocks at the bottom of the descent are out of your path. After that, it was fun.

The sketchy parts of the trail on the backside would probably be scary even in dry conditions, but were worse when we hiked them on Saturday. If the conditions do not change (and they should improve at least a little) you may face three or four short sections where the trail consists of boot tracks (one place to put each foot) only inches from an edge that drops off into the abyss (anything from thirty to maybe hundreds of feet). Where the trail is this skimpy, there appear to be places on the mountain side to plant an ice axe, but I was dismayed to discover that one cannot plant anything deep enough to hold a person onto the trail if they were to slip. If conditions had been very windy, or if anyone had been woozy, we would have stopped and not tried to cross these sections. In drier weather, the trail would probably be much wider; the drop-offs would still be there, but there would be a much bigger margin for misstep. As it was, I made it through but not before thinking long and hard about whether these sections were risks I really wanted to take. Getting back did seem easier, I guess because there was no choice. Hope that helps. I hope this doesn't scare anyone too much but on the other hand, I think there is a tendency to gloss over the risks. There are some serious risks involved in this effort. Happily, most are very manageable. Go slow, think carefully, be safe!

Thanks for the pictures Atari, very helpful. I think I may just camp at trail camp though, guitar lake doesn't seem very habitable.

Sunshine, see my second picture on post #15028. The snow/ice covered trail narrows to sections a little wider than the width of your feet. If you slip, you can see there's a lot of sharp boulders waiting for you. I doubt most people can live through that. Your axe won't save you. You'll hit a rock before you can react. The only option is to not slip and fall.

It sounds melodramatic, I know. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, but only post that in the interest of full disclosure. Plenty of people navigate it just fine. A lot of people would think nothing of it. However, I would not cross that with AMS. I'm also a normal human being, and not an experienced mountaineer and think people like me would want to know about something like this.

It's not knee trembling scary...just, "I'm not going to skip across this scary".

Annette,

I love the picture of you and Doug. You both look great.

Thank you for a wonderful trip report.

Yes, I was thinking the same when I saw that pic!

CaT