Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Heavy Rain at Portal - 7/12

With DMatt getting a well-deserved weekend off (thanks again, Dennis, for your daily reports), can anyone give some input on the current weather up at the Portal? The forecast today indicates a 50% chance of "heavy rain" (don't know the last time I saw those words in a Portal forecast) -- did it materialize? Did it scrub the air quality a bit?

Give or take a few, what have the actual temps at the Portal been, both during the day and at night?

And how're those %#*! skeeters?! Did the rain have any effect?

Thanks.

BruinDave

Skeeters were thick from the trailhead to the treeline. I wore a long sleeve shirt, and used Cutter unscented spray, and the left me alone.

The word I got yesterday was heavy rain and hail at the Portal, causing rockslides which closed the road. I think some people were stranded there last night--probably get some details today.
Dave

We arrived at the Portal yesterday about 3:30 and drove through the loop past the store. Nice afternoon at that time. We set up camp and drove down to LP to get dinner about 5 p.m. Warm rain and wind passed through town. It seemed like no big deal. On the drive back up the mountain it became apparent that it was a big deal in the mountains. It started with small, soccer ball sized rocks falling across the road. Then came the rivers of rock and mud flowing off the walls and down the road. We rushed to our camp site at the Family Camp and found the road not passable with a loud river of mud, gravel and rock flowing. The rain had subsided to a light rain, and after 20 minutes the flow through camp made it passable by truck to get our stuff out. We attempted to make a drive past the portal store to check things out up there, but the road had more debris on it than I wanted to navigate through. With the mountain side on the road down becoming unstable, we decided to get out while we could. It was about 7:30 by then. I was quite nervous driving down the road, seeing some rocks fall from the side, expecting to get hit by one. One emergency vehicle passed us on its way up. Finally, down on the flats we saw they had closed the road up. Back in town, it was a scramble of people looking for lodging. There were no vacancies, not even in the smallest of motels for miles. We made the drive back home through the storm. That is another story in itself.
Not sure what the road conditions will be up there Sunday or Monday, but as of Saturday evening, the road up was closed.

-markb-

Here's some picts. Whitney Portal Rain 07/12/08

Talked to Snow Nymph at about 8 am this morning. She and her group just made it off Whitney as the skies opened up last night. They were stuck at the Portal until 11:30 pm last night. This morning she was at Lone Pine with Moosetracks and others. Some friends were also stuck in Bishop. The 395 was closed yesterday and is still closed today. Caltrans link is here:

http://www.dot.ca.gov/cgi-bin/roads.cgi

There is more flooding expected today. Have not talked to anyone since this morning.

Must have been a hell of a lot of rain. I hope everyone is OK. There is this mudslide story in the San Francisco paper:

Huge slide in eastern CA damages 50-plus homes
Sunday, July 13, 2008
(07-13) 15:21 PDT INDEPENDENCE, CA (AP) --
A massive mudslide Sunday significantly damaged more than 50 homes in an area scarred by last year's wildfires, nearly destroyed a historical fish hatchery and reduced Highway 395 to one open lane in this remote city on the east side of the Sierra Nevada.
Residents of the homes were evacuated, said Carma Roper, spokeswoman for the Inyo County Sheriff's Department. Officials were using a nearby school as a shelter.
Severe thunderstorms Saturday spawned the mudslide, which measured 300 yards wide and up to three feet deep, in the Oak Creek-West Fort area of Independence, officials said.
Highway 395 was fully closed for several hours, but the California Highway Patrol started shuttling small groups of vehicles along the single open lane through the mudslide area, Roper said.
"There's significant debris on the highway," she said. "It's slow going."
The slide oozed across Highway 395 and some mud entered the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which supplies much of the city's water.
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power spokeswoman Gale Harris said the critical aqueduct was not harmed.
Benett Kessler of KSRW-TV in Bishop said the state-owned Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery was not spared, with many of its trout killed and houses at the hatchery ruined.
Roper said officials remained on the lookout for further flooding.
The mudslide occurred in an area that was devastated by wildfires last year.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/07/13/state/n101733D31.DTL&tsp=1

We were off the trail having lunch at the Portal Store before 1:00 - In Lone Pine by 2;00 or so - Late afternoon didn't look good up the hill - by dinner time and all evening steady rain - heavy at times - can only immagine what it was like up there --does anyone know if and when Jack and Betsy came down??
Dave

Oh my..Just finding out about this...these rains so far are not hitting us in Tahoe..we had thunder yesterday but no rains.

Hope all is okay with everyone down there.

Hi, gang. Everyone mentioned above is down and safe, with reports of insane weather at Trail Camp Saturday afternoon/evening, flooding on the switchers, etc. Jack and Betsy made it down long before the rain/hail, and SnowNymph and Devon made it just as it started to sprinkle. I had been in HM putzing around and got to the Portal around 3:30-4 under darkening skies. DougSr had headed to town, then back up to say it was dumping down there (still nice at the WPS at that point). A short while later, the rain hit at the portal, and kept pounding. The pipe below the road just below the store filled with sediment and it overflowed onto the road, causing a pretty big rush down through the parking area. I have vid and will hopefully get to it in the next day or two.

The mudslide occurred at the upper switcher in the road below the portal, putting about 3 feet of mud/rock on the road and plenty of large boulders. DougSr, Jack and I went down to check it out but it was perfectly clear we couldn't do anything about it. As of 3 p.m. the road is clear, large dirt berms on the inside of the switcher from clearing the debris. The County of Inyo REALLY needs to be applauded for starting work late last night (we left around 11:30pm in a lane they had created) and finishing it off today.

There is a detour setup northbound through Fort Independence, where the major mudslide occurred. Traffic was primarily backed up southbound, and I think they were escorting groups through in that direction. The backup extended beyond the rest stop (10-15miles) north of Indy. For northbound, the detour goes through the Fort paralleling the highway, coming out just about where the 2-lane drops to 1. I couldn't see anything from there, so sorry, no idea what the mudslide looks like. I'll be heading south for patients this week, so I'll try to take some pics if I can.

Hung at the portal most of the day today, letting traffic clear a bit, and no word of any emergencies above, at least to our knowledge. I hope everyone on the mountain is OK. It was a beast of a storm.

-L

We had showers at Trail Camp on Friday in the early evening. It wasn't much to comment upon.

My party departed the Whitney summit a little past eleven in the morning. Off the Crest we saw some possible thunderheads in the making to the SW. Two of us made a side trip to the Keeler Needle on the way back and had something catch our eyes and ears.

That's when we first saw lightning to the SW. Our estimates on three counts(delay between the lightning bolt and the thunder) put the lightning at about 15-17 miles. Well, we decided to beat feet and get off the ridge and get to camp.

Fast forward to around 4pm. The clouds started to come in from the NORTH. (Remember the clouds and lighting earlier were coming from the southwest). The cloud bases dropped below 14K as the ridge got socked in. Along the way, we experienced showers first, then rain and lighting. The lightning persisted for a while (smacking the heck out of the various peak and needles) and the rain finally stopped around 11-11:30.

That's what I recall.

Hi all, we just returned from Reno today and got home to Palmdale at about 7 pm. we came down the 395 not knowing about the weather and mud slide. We were up in the Lassen Volcanic National Park the last week hiking around. Now all the traffic delays and road work makes sense... We came through Independence about 5 ish and they were still escorting but it wasn't a very long wait. (Sign said up to 3 hours!) Glad everyone is safe and I guess we made a good call in not staying in LP and hiking up to LP lake tomorrow...

Ron

Just as we parked in a forest service campsite below the first switchback on Saturday evening the rain that had started 20 mins before turned into a powerful thunderstorm. We first sat in our cars watching the deluge and then got out to prepare dinner. A lone woman came into our campsite asking if she could make her way to the Family Campground since the road was closed from a landslide. We all walked out to the road to see what she was talking about and were shocked by what we saw. The road we had driven on not 30 mins before was covered in boulders, rock and sand with a river of water running through it.

We talked with many people that drove down from the Portal hoping to get through. Several were so tired from backpack trips that had just ended and all they wanted was a hot shower and warm bed in Lone Pine. My heart went out to them. A few determined souls walked through the debris and were intending to walk to Lone Pine or had rides waiting for them at the bottom.

I read here that they opened a lane by 11:30pm. What great work by the road crews! We heard their diesel engines and back-up beepers into the night.

My pictures are here in the middle of my album from this weekend:

http://picasaweb.google.com/ryan.norma81/MtWhitneyTrailWork712132008

Norma

My group of six were at Trail Camp during the storm. It was not fun. Over-all the trip was fun, unfortunately I didn't summit, I turned back when it started thundering. I was about a half hour for the summit. Going to try to do it in one day before the summer is out.

We camped at the Trail Campsite on both the 11th and 12th.

On the evening of the 11th the rain was relatively light and lasted for a little over an hour.

On the 12th we left camp around 8:45am heading for the summit. We reached the 13,600ft marker, were the trails meet, at around 1pm; there was thunder and lightning approximately 3miles away on the far side of the ridge. The weather looked like it was going away from us; however, a number of people were turning back. My group continued on picking up speed in case the weather turned for the worst. The pace was too much for me and I turned back at about 13,900ft. I came down the mountain in nice weather arriving back at the Trail Camp around 3:30-4pm. The other three members of my group summitted at about 3:30pm and headed back down, arriving at approximately 6pm. By then the summit was in cloud and we heard later there was rain, hail & lightning up there. Members of a group we met later at camp were on the summit at 5:30pm and said it was pretty scary. By 6:30pm at Trail Camp the rain started coming down and we were forced into our tents. Later the rain intensified and there was considerable thunder and lightning for a long period of time. At its closest point there was less than three seconds between the lightning and the thunder clap. It was pretty intense! By midnight the rain stopped and at 3am I sat outside our tents looking up at a perfectly clear sky and the Milky Way.

When we hiked down on Sunday, arriving at the Portal around 1pm, the evidence of flash flooding was all around; rocks, stones and mud on the roads and car parks. There was 2 inches of water in the bed of my truck.

Note on Sunday morning weather.

Some clouds towards the opposite side of the Owens Valley at sunrise, but generally blue skies everywhere else. Cloud coverage increased noticeably in the first several hours of daylight. I descended (left up high around 7:30-7:45) in overcast and finally ran into sunshine below Lone Pine Lake.

I was with Tarkman1.

The morning of the 12th was clear with some wisps of moisture here and there. Left trail camp around 5:30. Climb up Muir sometime early morning. Then met up with the rest of the group on the Summit of Whitney. We saw some thunderheads building pretty quickly.

That, and the guy talking loudly on a speaker phone prompted us to leave the summit quickly. WTF - I go into the mountains to get away from speaker phones. Thanks dude. (btw, you were nice and friendly along the trail, but that act wasn't cool).

Tarkman1 and I scrambled up Keeler Needle spending just a few minutes on the summit before scurrying down counting the seconds between lightning flash and thunder - very much aware that we moving toward the storm.

We made it back to Trail Camp under blue skies (around noon I think it was), but it started getting cloudy quickly.

It rained pretty hard.

The most amazing thing was the huge blue bolt of lightning that arced between Keeler Needle and Third Needle.

I watched Muir get hit 4 times and saw a forked bolt strike the Whitney summit and Keeler Needle simultaneously. The storm let up around 11PM.

Grey - were you shining a bright flashlight around the Trail Camp lake and up onto Wonton's throne? I was up around 3 - 3:30 testing the "Starry Night" setting on my new camera. Someone was shining a pretty powerful flashlight all over the place.

I had an LED headlamp on for about five minutes as I wandered around near our tents. Then I sat outside in the pitch darkness for another thirty minutes or so. I did not see any other lights around but we were pitched near where the trail initially enters the camp area so I could not see much of the rest of the camp including Trail Camp Lake.

Spent Saturday at Devil's Postpile and Mammoth Mountain watching some thunderstorms at a distance, and receiving only minimal rain. On the way to Lone Pine on Sunday we encountered a traffic jam about 9 miles out of Independence, moving in fits and starts at a snail's pace (even though traffic was moving fine north). The slide in Independence crossed the highway, with all southbound lanes closed, the northbound lanes used to carry southbound traffic, and a side road used to carry northbound traffic. By 2:30, traffic was moving much faster, at last.

After 2.5 hours delay, we arrived in Lone Pine to pick up our permit, only to discover that the forest service would not issue permits for today (the 14th) due to weather (despite having a reservation). So our long planned trip up Whitney was postponed till next year.

Camping at Portal was fine Sunday night -- a bit of rain, not too heavy. Plenty of small rocks around on roads, but the big mess had already been cleared.

Our consolation was a hike up to Meysan Lake, a beautiful snow fed lake at the base of Mount Mallory. The hike is highly recommended, and a good challenge with about 3700' gain, but it was not the same as hiking Whitney. If you hike to Meysan, be sure to go to the top most lake, even though the trail becomes hard to follow. It would be a great destination under any other circumstances.

Nice vid Moosetarck. What kind of boat were you in?