My son and I entered at Horseshoe Meadow last year on June 19th and exited at Whitney Portal after summiting Whitney on June 25th. The challenges we encountered included:
- Similar conditions at New Army Pass to those described above. Topping out required a very steep, 25-30 foot climb over a cornice that was hard enough to require crampons and ice axes during all but a 2 to 3 hour window of afternoon sun.
- 8 to 10 knee deep or deeper stream crossings between Soldier Lake and Rock Creek.
- Two long, snow-covered traverses within about a half a mile of Whitney's summit.
- A single boot-width traverse through hard granular snow from trail crest to the upper-most switchback. As soon as the sun passed the ridge, the trail became
much more challenging. The chute was still snow covered all the way down from Trail Crest.
- More single boot-width trail for the length of the heavily snow covered cable sections coming down the switchbacks with fresh tracks outside of the cables. Some sections had water pouring down from the rocks above.
When we picked up our permit on the 19th, the ranger thought we stood a 50/50 chance of finding the switchbacks passable when we reached them. And while there was plenty of snow last year, I would imagine the above descriptions would remain true this at least two weeks later this summer.
We encountered more than one group of relatively inexperienced newbies below New Army Pass and then later below Trail Crest who had been intimidated enough to turn back. All of them were still having tons of fun, though, and were just happy to be out there.
My son taking a break on one of the long traverses below the summit of Mt. Whitney on June 24th, 2016:
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https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6JcudqPKUakcDhOLTZ4endGRmM[/img]
