As I said above, I did my January trips under “ideal conditions.” There wasn’t much snow those winters, and it had consolidated for at least a week under sunny skies before each trip. I had relatively firm snow with low probability of avalanches.
Conditions are much worse right now, and I don’t see them improving much for at least a few weeks.
Several years ago, RichardP had a goal of climbing Whitney every week for a year. Things went pretty well for the first 51 weeks. On week 52, in late November or early December, he got caught in a storm on the summit. Rather than spend the night shivering in the summit hut, he tried to make it down and ended up spending the night shivering behind/under a rock somewhere between the summit and Trail Crest. He made it down the following afternoon with frostbite on seven(?) fingers and toes. Several weeks later, he still had some numbness in at least a few digits. I’m writing this from memory, since I can’t find the posts on WPSMB where this was originally reported. I haven’t heard from Richard in a while, so I don’t know what he’s doing now.
