Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Mt Whitney Main Trail in April for someone from the tropics

Hi everyone,

A bit late but just wanted to update that I made the solo summit via the Main Trail + chute on 19th April. The help and information received on the forums was very useful and would like to thank you guys for that!

I decided against doing the MR because of schedule mismatch and my lack of confidence in being able to handle the technical route.

Will recap the Main Trail climb below in detail in case anyone needs any information but if it’s too spoiler-y please skip or skim:

1. Drove from the Bay Area on 17th April. As it was a 6+ hour drive, I managed to reach in the night and could not pick-up the permit the same day. Stayed at Lone Pine and picked-up some last minute food supplies that night.

2. Picked-up the permit from the Visitor Centre at 8am on 18th April. I was told that the last summit report they had received was from 8th / 9th April and there had been a couple of reports of people turning back after that because of unfavourable conditions.

3. Drove to Whitney Portal. As was mentioned here, there were serious road construction activities being carried on and had to be guided by the pilot car and flaggers closer to Whitney Portal. The drive took more than an hour because of stoppages.

4. Once at Whitney Portal, I could park the car close to the trail starting point and get the backpack ready. A list of items that I considered / carried:
a. 45L + 10L backpack
b. 3 season two person tent (It’s advertised as a 4 season tent but pretty sure it was just 3. But it was the only one I had)
c. 5F sleeping bag
d. Inflatable camping pad
e. Heavy Inner Thermals – Just took one top and one bottom
f. Glove Liners, good winter gloves
g. Insulated snow pants with built in gaiters (decided to leave my separate pair of gaiters behind due to this)
h. Mountaineering plastic boots
i. 10 point fixed crampons
j. Snow shoes (carried them to Whitney Portal but left them in the car due to weight. More about this later)
k. Hiking poles
l. Woollen beanie, balaclava
m. 80cm ice axe
n. 2L camelback – full
o. 0.8L insulated Nalgene bottle – full
p. One set of my usual hiking pants / top
q. One heavy Fleece jacket, one soft shell, one windproof / waterproof outer jacket
r. Two pairs of merino wool socks
s. Food – 4 packs of dehydrated meals, cliff bars, trail mix, jerky, chocolates
t. Medication – pain killers, bandages, Diamox (didn’t end up using as I was well acclimatized), water purifying tabs
u. Helmet
v. Backpacking gas stove, propane mix, one utensil, waterproof matchsticks
w. Headlamp + back-up batteries
x. Smartphone with 10000mah battery bank. I used the Gaia GPS app
y. Wet / dry wipes
z. And of course, the wag bag

Including the food and water, the pack weighed 36-37 pounds so I made the decision to leave the snow shoes behind.

5. I was able to make slow progress from Whitney Portal. There was patchy snow 1 mile in and pretty much full-on 2 miles in. Although there were multiple people and cars at Whitney Portal, I met only one gentlemen the whole day and that too at around 8500ft. He was in casual hiking gear and warned about heavy snow and confusing trails some feet up.

6. Although I didn’t meet anyone else on the trail, there were clear footprints in the snow that I could follow and refer to my phone GPS app any time the trail got confusing. I could use the plastic shoes all the way to Outpost camp and only put on the crampons past it. There was liquid water at Outpost but beyond it, I could only hear the trickle of flowing water but could not see it.

7. Reached Trail camp at around 4pm. The whole place felt like it had a snowpack of at least 3-4 feet. So the only place to set camp was on snow. As far as I could see, there were no other tents or people at Trail camp that day. The snow began to firm at around 5pm and I could set up my tent between rocks with some firm snow base.

8. The night was beautifully clear, very cold and not too windy. But I still had to sleep with all my gear. The mistake I had made here was not refill the water at Outpost thinking that I could still find a flowing source at Trail camp. I was left with only 0.8L bottle of water.

9. This delayed my start the next morning (19th April). Melting snow for water took a long time on the backpacking stove and moderately sized utensil. By the time I managed to get 2L of total water, it was already close to 8am. I staked the tent down with all the nails. Couldn’t find any stray rocks to put in the tent as everything was snow covered. As advised by the Visitor Center ranger, I kept one flap of the tent open and took all the food supply with me in the backpack just in case of marmots (didn’t see any though).

10. The snow was still firm on the chute but not for long. Once again, I could follow the footprints left behind and traverse across the chute. There were a few glissade marks as well. I saw just one set of footprints headed to the switchbacks so chose not to go that way. It took around 2 hours to reach the top of the chute. While I was close to the top of the chute, I could see another moving speck way below. Finally a human contact after 24+ hours of unnerving solitude!

11. He (Rick) made very fast progress and managed to catch up at Trail Crest. He had started from Outpost camp early in the morning and mentioned that there were two other gentlemen who were headed this way from there. The ridge was uneventful but had a lot of snow. Crampons and ice axe seemed absolutely necessary for the chute and beyond. Once more, there were clear footprints we could follow although we couldn’t see anyone else on the trail. Rick summited earlier as he had to return to Outpost by nightfall.

12. I believe Rick met a group at the summit that had come up the MR. I could only summit by around 1pm but by that time everyone had left the summit. Spent more than an hour at the summit as the weather was perfect. On the way back down, I met the two gentlemen that Rick had mentioned. It was around 2:30pm about 500 feet below the summit then. They were headed up.

13. Reached the chute by 4pm. I could tell that the snow had already firmed up a fair bit by then. So I tried playing it safe and glissading on existing marks and for short distances. But in spite of being cautious, I kept gathering a lot of speed and self-arresting was becoming more and more difficult. So I ended up walking down the rest of the way to Trail camp. My initial plan was to reach Trail camp, pack everything and then head down to Outpost for the fresh water supply on the same day but by the time I reached my camp, the wind had really picked up. There were regular gusts that made it difficult to pack the tent. In fact, I found the tent in a collapsed stage after the chute downward climb despite all the stakes. So I spent another night at Trail camp and had to melt more snow. This night was colder and windier. At some instances in the night, the gusts felt so strong that I thought the only thing holding the tent down was the fact that I was sleeping in it.

14. There was a gorgeous sunrise the next day (20th April). I could pack all my stuff in by 8am and make good downhill progress. The snow was a lot more patchy while going down (probably due to 3 days of clear skies). The trail felt a lot more active. I came across 2-3 people who were attempting to summit and a few others who were looking to head to Outpost and the lakes. Mirror lake was also partially thawed. I met the two gentlemen from the previous day. Apparently, they had summitted as well and managed to get to Outpost by 8pm the same day.


All in all a very memorable trip! I took a lot of photos and will post selected ones by this week. Thanks once again!