We attempted an overnight entry Wednesday June 10th. Started at 10AM toward trail camp and took it nice and slow all the way to save energy for the summit in the morning. We don't have much access to elevation training where we are from and some in our group definitely felt the effects of altitude.
Weather was definitely the killer for us. It rained most of the way up. Around 10,000ft it turned to hail and there were some lightning strikes separated from thunder by just a few seconds. It seemed to clear up in the last hour of our ascent. As we approached trail camp, clouds swarmed from behind us. The second we unraveled our tents hail started dumping on us. It caught us very off guard - right when we took off all our rain protection from bags/humans as the weather seemed to have been turning for the better. The result was us hastily setting up and climbing in to take cover. It dumped hail and snow for 45 minutes or more and all our warm gear got wet.
After almost an hour in our tents with a couple of us struggling to get warm, we decided it might not be safe for us to try to stay with all our gear damp/wet. We ended up packing up camp and heading back down the mountain and got back to our car around midnight. I'll post a picture of trail camp later. I imagine it will melt quickly with the clear skies in the morning but snow was down to roughly 11,000 feet.
Mount Whitney: 1 Amateur Hikers: 0
PS: several hikers said the SBs were looking good the earlier you start. Everyone who reached summit before 9AM seemed very happy with their early start. Unconfirmed but one report of a dislocated hip in an attempt to glissade the chute on Tuesday.
