If you are planning to camp at Whitney, there are bears active at the camp ground. I stayed in an rv at site 10 of the Whitney main campground on august 1st with my wife. 3 daughters age 14 to 20, daughter in law, and grand boys age 4 and 7.
In a tent at adjacent camp site were 28 year old son, 25 year old daughter and here fiance.

I was woken up at about 11:30 p.m. to the sound of banging by the garbage containers and recycle containers. Figured it was just loud day hikers up early but about 11:45 p.m. my daughter and fiance were knocking at the rv window saying that they wanted to use the rv bathroom because they saw a bear by the camp ground odd house. We let them in and they went back to tent.

At about midnight my son, daughter, and fiance were back banging on rv door saying that large bear had walked right up to their tent and was per them sniffing the outside of their tent. By now the whole rv was awake with everyone shining flash lights out the windows. I got my first sight of 2 cub bears.

Then everyone spotted the big bear at the camp site on the other side of us. It was standing right next to the tent on that site.

Right or wrong my son decided they needed to be warned to he started blowing his trail whistle out the window of the rv and beeping the rv horn. This woke up the people in that tent plus some of other people other across campers across the road. Pretty soon there was about small group of campers banging pots and hooting and hollering. Quite a rukus.

Luckily the large bear just slowly walked off up the road. The bear was obviously just looking for food and we had none in our rv or tent and I'm guessing the other campers didn't either.

My son, daughter, and her fiance were going to start their day hike at 2 a.m. so they just decided to head up to the portal early. They went with another solo day hiker from site 9. Larry was a 60 year old experienced hiker from Oakland who had also been woken in the rukus.

My daughter in her 1st hike ever kept pace with Larry and completed the day hike in about 16 hours. My son and daughters fiance had troubles and finished but in 21 hours. My son in the rukus had forgotten water sandals and extra socks. He fell off the logs going into Lone Pine lake and hiked all day with wet feet. Blisters and etc. He also lost his hat in the fall and forgot sun screen in the rukus so he got a pretty nasty sunburn. They were really battered over the 21 hours but they toughed it out. Basically they were not going to let sis and wife show them up.

When my son didn't show up by 6 p.m. that next day, I figured for sure the bear was going to make his nightly round so we drove the rv into town and found a hotel that would let me park the rv out back. I didn't want to go through another night of flash lights and banging pots all night.

I was there to hike white mountain with my 3 daughters so Whitney was just for acclimation for the rv crew.

So the whole purpose of this post is to let everyone know the bears are 100% real at Whitney. Do not keep food or scented items in your tent car and etc.