Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Good time to leave for a day hike to summit?

As my group only has a day permit for Whitney we have to summit and descend in one day. What is a good time to hit the trail to start our ascent at this time of year?

Your permit allows you to leave at midnight. Why not? Sunrise from Trail Crest is awesome. Plus, unless you are very slow or delayed, you would be back well before dark. At any rate, most dayhikers hit the trail by 3 or 4 AM. Good luck!

This is a difficult question to answer since you have not given us an idea what physical condition most of your group is in and what you want to accomplish...like being on the summit or Sierra Crest at dawn.

Most should be on the trail before 2:30 AM if you want to finish while the sun is still shining.

Not knowing the physical capabilities of those in your group, plus other factors like your prior knowledge of the trail, makes this difficult to answer. For the past four years, I organize a group from my work to do Whitney in a day. This year the group did the hike on August 9th, and we had two groups leave at different times. A large group left at 1:30am, while a smaller group of faster hikers left at 3:00am. The last hikers got off the mountain at 7:00pm, plenty of time to relax and then enjoy one of Doug's awesome Portal burgers. Enjoy your hike and the experience.

Whitney Mike

See the posts in Day Hike Best Time to Leave and Plan when to leave for additional information.

I(33) just did the day hike with my father(64) and his wife(55). She was the slowest out of the group-8 hour decent. We left at 3am and made it back between 9-10pm. That is with close to 2 hours of stops, breaks sight seeing. This is just to give you an idea. I will say I would shoot to get back before dark, as going down in the dark is much harder than going up

I met a man who did the day hike successfully at age 69 the first time. He was accompanied by friends age 50 and 17. They started at midnight and they took 20 hours. He hiked it again the following year in 17 hours. When my son (16) and I (46) did the hike it took us 13 hours. We saw a man in his late 20's who was in better physical condition than I, turn back at Trail Crest with nausia and headaches. We saw overweight and "over the hill" men complete the hike.

There are a lot of variables. I would say start as early as you can get yourself up. There has to be a point of diminishing return when you start a 21 mile hike with less sleep.

If you want to hit the trail early, dial it down early the day before the hike. The day before our Whitney dayhike, we checked into our motel in Lone Pine at 1 PM. By 3 PM, our packs were packed and waiting at the door, ready to go. For the next 8 hours, we rested quietly and actually slept quite a bit. At 11 PM we ate a quick breakfast in our room before driving to the Portal, and by midnight we were on the trail, feeling well-rested and ready for our adventure.

My group of three hit the trailhead at 3:45 AM. I was the slowest hiker and summited at 1:00 PM. My two buddies started getting ahead of me going up the switchbacks. One guy summited at 12:20 PM and the other at 11:45 AM. We headed down at 1:30 PM, stopped for an hour at trail camp, and made it to the bottom at 8:00 PM (just as it got dark), just minutes after the Portal Restaurant stopped taking orders. Bummer…I really had my heart set on a cheeseburger. Perhaps we should have started earlier.

Well for something like Longs Peak the question isn't complicated at all... you basically left the trail head as early as you possibly can and the guideline was to get off that summit by noon. The reason being for thunderstorm activity.

That guideline also would normally guide me for Whitney, though this has been a *really* dry summer this year, so you're not at likely to encounter the weather. But normally I set my departure time so that I can gain the summit by 11ish and be off the summit by no later than noon. At least that's the perspective I go from when I try to provide advice about when to start the dayhike.