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As Levitate mentioned it is easier to get a permit for the "montaineer's" route from the other side. A permit via the usual approach from North Fork Big Pine Creek (Visiting Mt Whitney) is significantly easier to obtain than the usual lottery (last I checked) but still books up much more quickly than most other Sierra Vevada quotas. You can also get walk-in permits. I never failed to get a walk-in pernit at any high sierra location that offers them by showing up ~1 hr before the ranger station opens but YMMV. There are other viable approaches to this route from other trailheads but I'm not that familiar with them and they will be much longer than north fork. From north fork, you will need like 3 days or something like that depending on snow conditions etc. The thing is, this route involves going up a steepish rock filled gully with the last few hundred feet pretty exposed. There is no "trail" as such for the last part of the ascent. Normally in the late summer months there is a snow free path up the gully that you can ascend with basic scrambling skills, but some people prefer having a rope/harness due to said exposure.. This year, I suspect it will be snow filled year round. It will always be full of snow in April/May/June. It is arguably easier going up snow than the lovely scree/talus gully, but you should have some basic familiarity going up moderately steep snow with crampons + ax first. So yes going up the other side is much easier to get a permit for, is not a technical climb, and can be tackled with basic backpacking and scrambling or ax/crampon skills, but if you are looking for a trail to follow up to the summit this is not that. For the regular trail (or anything in the high sierra), April/May will be full of snow. This year is an exceptionally high snow year, but there will always be significant amounts of snow and probably no real visible trail at the higher elevations in April. Even in early June of last year, which was a "normal" snow year, everything above ~11-12k feet was totally covered in snow. Even in 2014/15 which were apocalyptic drought years, there was plenty of snow above 11-12k feet in most of the sierra nevada, and the roads didn't open until ~late May those years so I'm sure in April everything above 10k was covered in April.
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Jul 19, 2017 20:32
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 19:23 |
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