Syoung's excellent recent
report and photos from his day trip up the hikers trail certainly gave me pause about water levels at creek crossings. (I recommend checking it out if you haven't yet.) I'm planning to go up the NF of Lone Pine Creek the weekend before July 4 and spend a few nights at Iceberg Lake. My intended route and syoung's are different, but since they're in the same general vicinity I assume water levels at creek crossings will be similar. I had been contemplating start from Whitney Portal at around 4-5am in order to avoid high water flow at creek crossings and to minimize post holing. However, seeing syoung's photos of the sketchy snow bridges over raging waters
in the pre-dawn darkness gave me pause. Would the water levels be significantly higher if I started 1-2 hours later from WP, at first light? What do people think is the time of the day/night when water levels are at their lowest? I get that they're likely at their worst/highest in the afternoons after the day time melt. But it's not clear to me that 4am vs 6am would make a big difference. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance for everyone's collective wisdom!
