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It's 1.89 miles (the old 1.9), using the shortcut (old trail, from west of the last window more directly up to the summit, shown on the "Forest Service" base layer map.).
There was no trail that followed the squiggly black dashed line on the FS topo layer. Topo maps of the Whitney summit for the last hundred years of different scales and ages have used one of two hand drawn trail routes. One is the current one with the fake squiggles. The other has a single loop to the west that better matches where the trail has been maintained. That is the form on the USGS topo I bought in 1971 for a hike from Tahoe to Whitney. On Caltopo, view the Mapbuilder overlay to see a line for the John Muir trail that is derived from a GPS track of the existing trail. This may be a more accurate measure of distance traveled on the ground by people on the trail. The existing trail also shows in the aerial view. It is the only actual trail that has been built and maintained to the top of Whitney for the last 50 years.
Dale B. Dalrymple
