a friend and I climbed on sat july 8th for gear needed, I would recomend 1. crampons or spikes (microspikes), the snow sections are very long and there are many, you will use them. 2. axe 3. water shoes, there are many, and I mean many water crossings that will go above your ankles, even up to your knees 4. a good flashlight to see farther just in case it takes longer to descend 5. water proof pants for glassing down the chutes or any other steep part with snow.
so we started at 4am, temperatures were nice, didnt really need a jacket until we got to the top of the chutes, it got a little windy there for a bit, which made me pull out my windbreaker. there is a stream in the first few miles which will be knee high, we had read about it, so we had water shoes, there were plenty more sections where the water shoes came in handy. I dont know all the sections names but all I can say is that at about mile 4 or 5, we were walking mostly on snow up to the chutes or the switchbacks sections. walking on the snow so long with crampons made our shoes wet, and socks too. A few pairs of socks are recommended to change from wet to dry. this was our first time up whitney, so we were pretty much looking up and following the herd. when we came up to either climbing the chute or doing the switchbacks, we heard the chute was the way to go, and so we went. for me it was a 2hr battle up the chute, my bud took 2.5 hrs up it. it was not easy, but we made it. the crampons came in very helpful here. we saw many people slidding down the hill in this sections. to make it short, we made it up, and on the way down we got a bit lost, so it took us longer to get down it got dark and we had a bit of trouble finding the trail back. we didnt glassade down any of the snow sections because we didnt have water proof pants and didnt want to get wet so it took us a bit longer to get down. For us it was a very long and strenuous day, but we made it.
