It was a great day to hike up Mt. Whitney Trail. I went up the trail only only about 1-2 miles only as practice for the full trail later this week.
The drive up to Whitney portal was pretty with a cool breeze. Whitney portal was at about 40F when I got there. Driving up from a distance it seemed like snow had settled at lower elevations. As I met hikers coming down the trail most of them noted that there was snow near lone pine lake and all the way up. I met someone who made it as far as outpost camp and back and said that there were sections where the trail was fully covered by snow.
Carillon Creek crossing the trail: Good amount of water flow to cover the boot. Please make sure to have a snow boot or water proof boot to walk through this.
Lone Pine Creek crossing the trail: Good amount of water flow to cover the boot but there are stepping stones that you can walk on without touching water at all.
John Muir Wilderness & Hiker's notice board: Clear trail with some water flow on the trail in spots.
Further up the Hikers's notice board: Small sections of melting ice/snow starts.
About 0.5 - 1 mile up somewhere near Lone Pine lake- The trail is mostly covered in snow. The snow was slushy, melting and slippery. I only had trail runners on so I didn't get a good grip. I tried going up a snowy slope adjacent to what seemed like the trail but ended up slipping many times. There people going up and down this section with a lot of foot marks. However there also seemed to be super wide( 8-10 inches) snow tracks and it made me wonder what kind of ski tracks these were.
I went a little further up the slope and then mild flurries started to fall down. Since I wasn't entirely prepared with footwear I decided to turn around. However coming down hiking was near impossible. It was then it struck me what those supposed ski tracks were. Most hikers including myself came down that slope sliding with our butt on the snow. This was somewhat fun except that I wasn't wearing snow pants so my but felt pretty wet from that point to all the way down the trail!
