Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Current Main Trail Conditions??

There a couple of excellent reports on the MR for this past weekend. However, I have not seem much on the Main Trail...how's the snow level?

Thanks

I went up and down the Main Trail on Saturday. Up until trail camp there is snow, but it is fairly hard packed and easy to walk on top of. After a couple hours of sunlight it is not slippery.

Once you get to the area of the 96 switchbacks, the snow is quite a bit deeper. At least on Sat., almost no one was using the switchbacks (probably because the trail is so narrow?); instead, we we straight up the area to the side which is normally rocky but now completely covered in snow. It is very steep and you sink about a foot or two into the snow, but enough people had gone there that you basically just use their footprints and the snow is soft enough that slipping doesn't cause any grave danger. But again, you want to do this only when the sun is out or I'd imagine it'd be very treacherous.

Past the trail crest snow was even deeper but again doable if you just put your feet in other people's footprints. Occasionally my foot went into a hole and I sunk in past my knees. I did not find it necessary to use crampons or any other winter equipment. It was fairly warm and sunny on Sat. though. I will try to post some photos later..

Thanks for the report. Much appreciated.

Some photos from Saturday!
Here is the main trail with a view of the switchback area (rocks) and the alternate route up the chute to the right that we used on Sat.
It is quite steep and easy to slip, but the snow is deep enough that you don't go anywhere. The somewhat carved out area over most of the
length of the chute is a small avalanche that someone set off last Friday. It appeared safe on Sat., and we went up along it.
It looks like from another comment today that the switchbacks are being cleared out now and should be hikeable soon.


And here is what it looked like going up the snowy chute. Very steep but the snow was soft.


Just past the trail crest the snow was fairly deep. We found it doable with just gaiters and no showshoes or anything special.

By the way, only part of the photos appear in my browser- if you view them in another window, you'll be able to see everything I was mentioning.

Ann Marie, you need to use HTML (vice UBB Code) if you want to shrink down your images to fit a normal page. See the example in Adding Picture Images.

Unfortunately, once you submit a post in the default mode (UBB Code Only), you cannot later add HTML tags. That means that we cannot retrofit your post. We could if it was submitted in "HTML and UBB Code" mode (a drop down menu option). (edit: admin changed them.)