For the people who are interested in switchbacks and in general hiking Whitney soon. Our group of 6 summited it on June 15. We started our hike on June 14, from Whitney portal and stayed at trail camp. Next morning (June15) we started around 6am for summit, reached trail crest at 9:45 am and summit at noon. We had micro spikes, poles and Ice axes and used switchbacks for going up and coming down. Switchbacks are not completely snow free but with ice axes and micro spikes we managed it and after us we met many people who actually used them.
There are couple of major spots though, where you need to take precaution. First is at cables ( in fact we saw a couple walking down after they saw snow at cables, as they were not comfortable), where we have to use caution and ice axes to cross the section. The other part is where switchback connects trail crest. That part is still under heavy snow and difficult to navigate. To avoid that, we hiked up the mountain behind it and traverse to trail crest (20 minute detour and no snow). This part was bit strenuous and may not be useful for everyone. It is important that you take your own time and pace. We were slow but super-cautious in our ascent and took almost 4 hours to reach Trail crest.
After that, last 1.9 miles were like 5 miles, very tiring but worth it at the end. Started heading down around 12:30. Going down on the switchbacks also was little tricky at the same spots I mentioned before, so we followed our exact same strategy that we used for ascent. This is our journey and use this information as per your hiking and navigation skills.
