Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board big snow year question

This years total in Mammoth is over 540 inches like it was a few years ago. Then, it made high passes like JMT's Muir Pass a postholing slog for many miles even into August.

Does anyone know if this years snow is a local Mammoth phenomenon, or has it affected further south?

I wonder when the PCTers will be going through there?

I know it is early to predict for later, but in August I'll be doing Kearsarge/Glen/Rae Lakes/Glen/Forester/Whitney. Thanks, Harvey

Doesn't get any further south than this. Mt Baldy just below the summit, coming out of the bowl on a 70+deg day last Sat. This year, it's not just for Mammoth.

I"m totally guesssing but you should be good, especially if it's mid to late August. Sounds like an awesome trip be sho to post a TR on this site when you do it!

Yetidude.

Harvey, it's hard to know. I'll be up at Kennedy Meadows for a week, starting tomorrow, doing dayhikes from there. We were going to do a trip 9 miles north, but had to cancel due to the snow.

Here is the snow graphs for Ca. The lower one is the only one relevant to this, I believe it covers Yosemite to Isabella.

http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/products/PLOT_SWC.2010.pdf

From the NPS website:

Tioga Road:
Tioga plowing operations were halted due to wet slab avalanche activity at the South Fork avalanche zone. With freezing temperatures forecast, plowing ops are expected to resume today.

I did all of those passes except Kearsarge in the first week of August,'06 which was another wet year up there. All were safely passable sans crampons or an axe with little postholing. My main concern was not the passes but canyons. High runoff made some stream crossings a little hairy.

But that was '06, I haven't compared the snow levels and there is no way to predict the rate of thaw this year. Just food for thought. YMMV

If you go to postholer.com, you can read the PCT'ers' journals. They're having trouble even getting past Idyllwild.

Thanks for all the replies.

Picture here is from 7/21/05- even simple Donahue Pass was covered although not any difficulty. 2005 was a relatively comparable snow year although this year will not be quite as much and I will be a week or two later. As everyone here knows, its' not just the amount of snow, but the weather that follows and determines the melt rate.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

In SoCal, there was a lot more snow on Mt. Badden-Powell today than there was 4/4 a year ago. There is at least 3'+ of compacted snow on the summit. My guess is things are going clear late.