My son and I did the White mountain hike on June 27th. The road and trail are fully open with no issues. There was a patch of snow maybe 30 feet just before the summit but you can just walk through it with trail shoes. There is no real exposure on White mountain. I find the drive to the locked gate trail head to be miserable as I am waiting every second to blow a tire. We made the drive in a VW Passat. By far the worst road I have ever driven on. Took about an hour 10 to 15 MPH.
We had overnight permits for Whitney on June 26th. but when I read the post about a guy post holing and then sliding down the snow to be caught by the cables, we switched the trip to White Mountain.
It's not Whitney but White mountain is a fun and challenging day hike.
The only eventful thing about the hike is that we encountered what I'm guessing could have been a Bob Cat or similar critter about a mile from the locked gate while hiking down. It was about 10 p.m. and dark. My headlamp was dimmer than ideal but I still picked up a set of eyes and the outline of the critter about 10 to 15 feet ahead of me sitting right on the side of the trail. Scared the SHXX out of me. Right or wrong I wasn't going to run, stand there, or walk forward so within seconds and without thinking, I picked up a bowling ball size rock and double underhand tossed the rock with high lift directly at the critter. The rock barely missed by only inches and the critter darted off perpendicular to the trail. The critter stopped about 20 to 30 feet off the trail and then just sat there looking back. I banged my polls, screamed, and kept shining my light on and off the critter which caused him to jog off another 20 feet or so. As I continued hiking down the trail, I could see the eyes of the critter on and off and that he was following along about 20 to 30 feet off and down the trail parallel to the trail. I made it to the car without incident but definitely the event shook me up.
Maybe an overreaction but being from the Chicago suburbs this is not something that you encounter at Wrigley Field. Does anyone have an idea what this critter could have been been?? Would white mountain even have a Bob Cat? For what it is worth this is why I don't like to hike at night. The two "up hills" on the way back down were very tuff and I was hiking very slow which is why I was out there about 1 to 2 hours longer than we wanted.