Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Whitney Main Trail Conditions 2015 (Out-of-Date)

Dwarak and I were in the same group. We went on 8th. We reached trail camp around 7 am. so snow was pretty soft for most of our hike. I will post some pics if people want.

Summary of conditions : need poles and micro spikes (yaktrax are also ok).

Trail Crest to Summit: Traction is absolutely required. There are many places where trail was completely covered in snow. my friends saw couple of people slip (fortunately recovered, and were visible shaken).

Switchbacks: SBs are doable even with trail shoes (with proper use of poles), but micro spikes would be better for a small section. Cables were pretty easy and couple of corners right after cables were bit more dicey. We wore spikes for only for 3-4 SBs, and wore them back at Trail Crest.

Coming down the chute :
tl;dr : It was too late in the afternoon and I shouldn't have done it.

I wanted come down the chute and carried an Ice Axe. I wanted to plunge step rather than glissade. The snow is pretty soft in the afternoon.. unfortunately we came back to Trail Crest only at 5-5:15 pm, and most of the chute was under shade. I tested the snow at the top left side (while looking down the slope) while it was not very soft it was fairly slushy.. I incorrectly expected snow further down would only be softer. Reality was exactly opposite.. the second half was lot more crunchy and varied quite bit (some places it was just thin layer and in some places it was not that easy to plant the ace axe handle). As net result I neither saved time or effort compared to hiking down SBs. Over all I took it pretty safe. Most of the time I wasn't actually standing up but rather scraping the snow one leg at a time with ice axe handed planted in snow. On top of that getting to the trail from the bottom of the chute was not easy, there were some tracks but it took some time for me to reach the trail. My gaiters didn't hold and my shoes socks were all very wet. But at no point was in any danger.. normal skiing experience helped just the snow.. it varied so much throughout the slope.