Mt Whitney Zone
Posted By: Granola White Mountain Peak Road - 06/15/18 03:07 PM
Greetings!

My bro and I are headed down to the area next week and are super stoked. We are looking to do White Mountain Peak a couple of days before we do Whitney. Does anyone have a current update on White Mountain Peak Road, as in, is it open?


This forum has been invaluable and I hope I can contribute something after our trip.

Thank you.
Posted By: Steve C Re: White Mountain Peak Road - 06/15/18 06:32 PM
Hi breakfast grin

I'm pretty sure the road is dry and open. But call the White Mountain R.S. in Bishop and make sure. It would be cool if you could report back what you find out. 760-873-2400
Posted By: Granola Re: White Mountain Peak Road - 06/15/18 07:47 PM
Just what I needed!

"Clear to the Barcroft Gate" - per the nice lady at Inyo NF.

Much obliged.

Hopefully the road doesn't eat a tire. laugh
Posted By: dbd Re: White Mountain Peak Road - 06/15/18 10:16 PM
Originally Posted By: Granola
Hopefully the road doesn't eat a tire. laugh


Hopefully it won't eat two. (My personal record... so far.)

Dale B. Dalrymple
Posted By: kedierluc Re: White Mountain Peak Road - 06/20/18 10:47 PM
We did the hike last Friday 6/15. The road is open to the gate. We took our time getting there to avoid tire issues (ie last 18mi of dirt road at avg 23mph)
The weather was great (50s), but gets windy in the afternoon. No water on the trail. Only a snow field at 14K, but it was easy to navigate with just hiking shoes. Impressive view of the eastern Sierras.
Posted By: Granola Re: White Mountain Peak Road - 06/20/18 11:41 PM
Sweet! Thanks for the update and the heads up about the snow field. We'll be in trail running shoes. grin

Tom
Posted By: JMH Re: White Mountain Peak Road - 07/02/18 05:58 PM
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.
Posted By: dbd Re: White Mountain Peak Road - 07/16/18 09:35 PM
I went up White Mountain on July 6. While driving up to the gate I saw deer and along the trail I saw bighorn sheep. That would justify the presence of mountain lions, but I wouldn't expect one to let you get close. Most commonly seen along the trail are marmots and snowshoe hares. They would justify the presence of bobcats which also exist in the ranges east of the Sierra. There are also coyotes there, but they too seldom allow you to see them.

When I drove up mid-morning the wind was from the southwest. I stopped and took pictures at Sierra Vista. By late afternoon, the wind came from the northwest bringing smoke from the County fire. Sometimes smoke can enhance sunsets but that wasn't one of those times.

Dale B. Dalrymple
Posted By: Steve C Re: White Mountain Peak Road - 08/01/18 07:19 PM
I have a friend asking... has anybody been to the White Mountain gate in the past several weeks? Any unusual conditions of note?

Thanks!!!
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