I attempted Whitney using mountaineering route on dec 21st .. we took permit from rangers office (yes its open and they issue permits even there is no quota limit in winter) and started to whitney portal road around 10:30 am. road closed sign was there for 4 miles before the trail head and if you decide to pass through that then u will find road closed about a mile after. we parked our car near the sign and hiked 4 mile to trail head. it took additional hour and half .. trail condition was good for about 0.5 mile we started MR. After that trail can only be find through foot step from the people who passed earlier. it was good amount of snow and many times we were under snow till knee and find riskier .. E ledge had some ice and snow on top of it which we crossed carefully using crampons. most of the time we hiked without crampons .. but for certain area we had to use crampons as it was climb and no trail .. we took 5-6 hrs to reach lower boy scout lake and camped there..it was certain if we need to go to summit than we will need to stay another night .. we decided to retreat and came back next day .. mistakes i did was i forgot my gators ..even i wore ski pant snow was inside my boots and made my boots wet. that time we were the only party ..
