Mt Whitney Zone Forums Trip Reports Mountaineer's Route 6/29-6/30

My Dad and I had decided to attempt the Mountaineer's route on and overnight trip the weekend before 4th of July.

We were very fortunate to have great weather through June 29 and most of June 30 (Late afternoon thunderstorms, what else?)

We drove up to Portal on June 27 to camp. Did a quick acclimation hike to Lone pine lake. We were both feeling great with the altitude.

June 28: We mostly hung around the portal area and rested up as well as packed all our gear.

June 29: we left the trail head around 8am and made our way up through the ledges with good time. We only took about 2L of water each as we intended to fill often. No issues finding the trail on the way up. We met a ranger and a few climbers on their way down from the East Buttress. We took our first break at Lower boyscout lake and pumped some fresh water.






We departed and headed on up towards our intended camp at Iceberg lake. Unfortunately, my dad had ignored some of my stronger warnings about loss of appetite and so was not eating enough along the trail. He ended up bonking pretty hard at the base of the slope below iceberg lake. We ended up taking about a 30 minute break here while he ate some and recovered a bit. We made it to Iceberg lake at about 3:30 and set up camp.







June 30: Due to his bonk the day before and some lingering altitude symptoms, my Dad elected not to attempt the summit. I headed out along with several other climbers also camping at Iceberg at 6am. We stayed to the left at the bottom of the approach and went over the m buttress there and continued on up into the chute proper where we also stayed all the way left against the wall (the scree is much more stable here). No snow to speak of along the way.








We made it to the final 400 at around 8:15 and began making our way up. The final 400 is mostly clear of snow and ice but there was some remaining sections with some melt runoff that we mostly avoided. Summited at 9am. We stayed on the summit about 20 minutes before descending again down the mountaineers route to pack our gear and head out to the portal. Had an amazing portal burger at the portal store when we got there.









Overall it was a great trip with great weather...despite only half of us making the summit.
full album located
here

Great pictures with that Nikon. They look sharp and the colors are bursting. Good thing you kept the pack weight relatively low.

There's something really familiar about your fifth picture. Pretty ingenious using the trekking pole as a camera man but you might want to be careful on that final 400.