My friend Chris and I headed back up to Whitney again - 4th time for him, 3rd for me. We have been successful in our other attempts so we have a pretty good preparation routine - get a few long hikes in SoCal, spend a night a Horseshoe Meadow and then a Motel back in Lone Pine prior to hike day.
Our hike was once again successful and without too much incident, so I would rather focus on conditions on the trail. We checked out Tyler's trip report from the previous weekend so it is a good reference to look at his photos to see the changes in just a week.
Conditions report: Water water everywhere and plenty to drink. The May snow storms have left and the warming weather has filled the streams and "springs" (snowmelt for the most part). Plenty of flow in all the streams. The "Rockwell Springs" in Bighorn Park has a lot of flow and I tanked up straight from the stream on the way up and down. The switchback springs are gushing in the morning and afternoon. Still lots of snow trailside on the backside crest trail (I was running low on water and grabbed some snow to put in my bladder near the Mt Muir route).
It's getting warm now, over 100 down in the valley, high eighties at the portal. I think it still freezes at night at Trail Camp and above as we did walk over some fresh melting ice near the switchback springs. Windy on the crest and summit but I got hot on the switchbacks going up and down and was broiling by the time I got back into the trees on the way down. Wear an big goofy hat and cover up! With the warm weather this week things will change.
Ice Impingement on trail - nothing too bad. In general no problems with boots and poles as long as you pay attention. You can walk up the cables entirely stepping on rock. A couple switchbacks above the cables are iced over but they can be managed going up carefully and going down on the rocks. No issues with the last traverse above the snow chute to Trail Crest. There was one sketchy part just before the windows - an iced over north facing right turn that had a nice smooth drop down it that was intimidating some people. We managed it without much issue by carefully staying on the rocks to the downward side - just don't look down!
Someone left a large Subway sub in their pack at the Muir trail junction and sure enough a fat marmot was dragging the Subway bag down the trail when we went by. You could tell by how big he was that he had pulled off this maneuver before.
The only bummer is the continued abandonment of wag bags up and down the trail. Saw at least a dozen this time.
OK, lets see if posting pictures works:
Portal Waterfall was big:
Alpineglow on the crest from above Mirror Lake:
Trailside Meadow
Outflow from Trailcamp Pond
Consultation Lake
Flow from Switchback springs in Morning
Cables:
Snow Chute near Trail crest
Traverse above chute
Chris looking down on the Subway Bandit
GPS is actually close
On top taking pictures I saw a cloud of dust above Mt Hitchcock - rockslide by Crabtree lakes?
Also looking towards Chagoopa Plateau, saw smoke from a fire perhaps coming from Big Arroyo. It grew a little while we could see it but was not too bad, especially compared to the awful Lake fire by San Gorgonio
A coupe groups had come up the Mountaineers route and were downclimbing the opposite sides of the Final 400
Snow in the Final 400:
View across the back of the Needles on the way down. Compare with the similar pick taken a week earlier in Tyler's trip report:
Outpost Camp falls was big:
Three in the books now
Ron in SD
