Summited with a group of 7 on the 28th. It was my second time, as well as two other people in our group. The rest were doing it for the first time.
We got to the portal at 1PM on the 27, and our group of four was on the "new" trail by 1345. It was hot, especially on the exposed portions up until we got to Big Horn Park. Cover from the sun is a must if you start in mid afternoon. In Big Horn Park were were assaulted by the mosquito's and had to take off our boots for a solid 100' of trail (pressed between a granite face and the inundated meadow) that was under about 12" of water. That water was cold! but it felt good on our feet.
We made Trail Camp by just before 1900, but that time was delayed significantly by a gross navigational error on my part. We missed a switchback past the flooded trail north of Mirror lake and wound up veering to the south of the preferred course and up .80 miles of snow (by my watch), putting us on the shore of Consultation lake. That was not fun, there were old tracks on the snow we were following, but a bush blocked our view of the switchback and we were probably overly expectant of a snow crossing before Trail Camp from reading other trip reports here. We then had to hike a few hundred meters over the rocks to trail camp, where we rendezvoused with three of our partners who had hiked up earlier in the day.
We were on the trail by 0745 on the 28th and reached Trail Crest in just over two hours. The spring between switchbacks 22 & 23 flooded all of the switchbacks below it with cold water. The snow on switchback 88 was not a real technical challenge, but I was a bit freaked out by the thought of accelerating down the steep snow back below the snow covered switchback if I fell. Those were some slow, deliberate and careful steps for me, with trekking poles but no crampons. Switchback 91 had a much smaller, but slightly trickier patch of snow, but there was more room to fall with that one.
The hike to the summit was as advertised, with several hikers on the way down letting us know about the cairns that guided us around the snow patch on the approach to the summit. There were still multiple climbers slogging through the snow or wandering through the boulders outside the cairns on our way up, so the gouge wasn't well distributed. We were on our way down by 1:30PM and reached Trail Camp in 2:18, where we packed up and recharged our water. The trip down was relatively uneventful, other than the fact that the mosquitos down trail from Outpost Camp were somehow worse than the day before.
We took the new trail again, and watched the open sign on the Portal store turn off as were were 15' from the door at around 2045. The gentleman manning the store opened up to sell us some gatorades after we helped him load the trash into his truck, which was greatly appreciated.
I last summited in 2012, and was stunned by how much water is on the trail this year, I would certainly not bring excessive water weight on a summit attempt this year due to the easy availability of water everywhere on the trail. Climbing Whitney is still the best adventure one can have in a day or two in the Sierras!
