Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Onion Valley

Hi, I'm headed to Onion Valley next weekend, is most of the ice gone?

We camped this last Friday and Saturday at Onion Valley. No Ice or snow anywhere near the campground. No ice or snow on any of the trails either (we went to Kearsage pass)-just patches here and there in the shady areas. It's been very warm lately-nights are also pretty warm. Watch out for the solar powered water at the Onion Valley campground-shuts off pretty quickly after sundown...
Plenty of fish catching going on up there too...

Thanks, one more thing. Was there a lot of smoke from the fires?

I went from Onion Valley to Whitney with my 2 boys and we finished Sunday. No problems w/ any smoke the entire route except for haze in the pictures. Forrester had more snow than I expected but should be gone soon. We also saw alot less people than in the past which I assume is associated w/ the fires.

We didn't have much trouble with the smoke either, but it really depends on which way the wind is blowing. Sunday night, June 29th in the Whitney Portal Campground, it was very hard to sleep because the smoke blanketed the campground from about 10pm to 4am. I was sleeping with a towel over my face and still had a hard time breathing. We also met on the trail a couple who had camped at LBSL that night and had difficulty with the smoke and were concerned that the fire was closing in on them (during the night) because the smoke was so heavy. So in general, we didn't have much of a problem, but the potential is there.

Went up to Mt. Gould from Onion Valley this AM and it was OK. I was back at the car before 11. Later today it is very poor air quality down in the valley. Read Dmatt's report on this forum, though, regarding air quality.