Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board MR today

Kurt Wedberg has a guided group at Iceberg lake today, which will summit tomorrow. Reportedly, the snow is nicely consolidated all the way to the lake, and is hard enough to not need snowshoes, if one avoids the mid afternoon slog.

To show what a hardman he is, he is giving a slideshow in Costa Mesa this evening, driving up to the Portal, hiking up to Iceberg tonite, leading his group to the top and out in the morning, driving back down to give another slideshow wed nite in LA. makes me tired to write it.....

Thanks for the report Ken! Looks promissing for the next weeks :-)

Thanks for the report Ken - I'm arriving in Lone Pine next week to start a summit bid with Kurt. He certainly lives up to his mountain hardman name.

Very pleased the conditions are improving (touch wood) - I was concerned about the MR...

follow-up.
1. You would not have thought that Kurt had been up all nite without sleep, and climbed Whitney. Amazing.

2. He reports the snow as nicely consolidated. He did not use snowshoes at all. Did not need crampons, either, up to Iceberg, with the established trail in the snow. On the descent, a little slushy, but not breakable crust.

One the route itself, very nice snow to notch, above notch, consolidated heavy snow. He fixes a rope for his clients, but experienced mountaineers would not need this.

He reports this is about the most snow he has ever seen in the North Fork Canyon.

At the Adventure 16 meeting Kurt was asked about the details of yesterdays Mt. Whitney trip (the one between his presentation in Costa Mesa on Tuesday and Santa Monica on Wednesday).
One of the guides had gotten sick and so he consented to come up and lead the group to the top. He made an arrangement to have the group up and ready to go at 4:30 am Wednesday morning. He said "I will be there"

He left Costa Mesa at 9:20 pm after his presentation and drove to the highest point on the road. That was on the upper switchback where the avalanche has covered the road.

http://piotrowski.smugmug.com/gallery/462036/1/18818616

Then he started hiking at 1:15 am, arriving at camp below Iceberg lake at 4:30 am. The group all summitted by about 10:00 am. Afterwards he hiked all the way back to his car, drove to Santa Monica and was ready to speak by the 7:00 pm talk.

Very interesting...what he had to say. He wouldn't even have explained his one day Whitney hike in the snow with no sleep....had he not been asked.

Kudos to Kurt. Very impressive.

Is anyone aware of accumulations or windloading from this small Thursday-Friday storm? I'm hoping to go up with a group Sunday-Monday.

Thanks.

Kevin,

Good to see you got to this post. Looks pretty good huh!

Hey Ben,

Thanks for turning me on to this message board. Lots of good information. Our climb looks good. We'll just have to wait and see what this storm does (if anything.)

-Kevin