Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Climbing Russell weekend of the 16th

Hello, I have plans to climb Mt. Russell next week and would like to hear about current conditions from anyone who has been up there in the last couple of days. There are alternate plans just in case...
Thanks!

Hi GEO -
I was also toying with the idea of summiting Russell this weekend on 10/16 via UBL and then the east ridge. With the amount of snow on the main trail from last weekend - see the photos from Richard P at the end of the thread on the "Fall 2010 Conditions on the Main Whitney Trail" forum - I'm a bit concerned that there will be too much snow on the east ridge for safe passage. I think that you don't want to be hiking on that east ridge with ice. Is the scree slope up to the Russell/Carillon pass above UBL covered in snow? Would crampons be better up that? It may be too late in the season by a week or two? Post any update info/pics here. Thanks.

gwesley - thanks for the input. We changed our plans due to snow on Russell. We are going to head out to Meysan lake and do a few of the climbs out that way.

I was just up on the east ridge this past weekend. All South and West Facing slopes are snow free. It was just the usual fun scree all the way up to the actual route. Once on the North side of the Ridge and heading up to the East Summit it was knee deep unconsolidated snow. I broke trail while setting up a running belay and we turned back at 13.8k due to a storm moving in, getting late in the day, and slow conditions moving forward (plus back down). If you head up, you need to be competent in winter conditions on somewhat sketchy terrain. The MR on Whitney did not look like it would have been a lot of fun either with what appeared to be similar conditions.


Pictures can be found here:
http://www1.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbn..._NAME=snapfish/