I can speak to the amount of snow at the Portal Store. I was there April 6th and the snow was at least 6 ft. To give you an idea of how much snow, I could look on top of the trellises at the trailhead (I’m 6’5”). I’m sure some of it has melted since then.
The old trail from the store up to the North Fork Lone Pine Creek crossing was well established; nobody had started a bootpack on the Mt. Whitney Trail proper. I ran into a few hikers who had snowshoed up to Lone Pine Lake, they said the trail was pretty well established from all of the snowshoers.
The biggest issue with hiking up to the Portal will be the landslide debris on the road. It’s easily passable, but clearing it will take some time. There’s also evidence of a wet slide which ran over the road about 200m down the road from the store. The debris included trees and rocks, the slide appeared to start above the trail so there might be some trail damage there. We won’t know what condition the trail is in until the snow fully melts.
