Mt. Whitney weather fail, 8/30/17

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adamschneider
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Mt. Whitney weather fail, 8/30/17

Post by adamschneider » September 15th, 2017, 10:15 am

For a couple of years now, I've been wanting to drive down U.S. 395 and see the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada all the way down to Lone Pine or beyond. (I'd been down to Tom's Place before, but no farther south.) I figured I may as well hike to the top of Mt. Whitney while I was at it; at 14,505', it's the highest point in the Lower 48.

You need a quantity-limited lottery-assigned permit just to hike Mt. Whitney, so I submitted a request for a Wednesday in late August. It was such a wet winter in California that I figured July might still be too snowy/icy; and besides, I'd heard that August would be much safer in terms of thunderstorm risk. My plan was to go up the Mountaineers Route (5 miles, 6,200' EG) and down the Mt. Whitney Trail (11 miles), all in one day.

Image

I got my first choice of dates and headed south a few days beforehand. I spent Sunday evening at Mt. Shasta and then most of Monday at Lassen Peak, which was mercifully smoke-free. I spent Monday night near Lake Tahoe, then drove down the east side of the mountains on Tuesday afternoon. You can see Mt. Whitney from Lone Pine, and as of 3:00pm on the day before my big hike, it didn't look good:
20170829-145944 storms.jpg
So much for a smaller chance of storms in late August. But what really worried me was that the weather forecast for Wednesday was even worse. But I crossed my fingers and hoped the Thunderstorm Gods had gotten it out of their system. I killed some time Tuesday evening by driving up Horseshoe Meadows Road, which was pretty cool because it was paved and went all the way up to 10,000'. Then I found my reserved campsite at Whitney Portal (8,000') and hit the hay early.

I woke up at 4:00am and was on the trail (8,360') by 5:00. I might have tried to go even earlier, but I didn't want to have to find my way up a faint trail in unfamiliar terrain in the dark of night.

After an hour on the trail, some light was showing off to the east, and it was obvious that it probably wasn't going to be a bright sunshiney day:
20170830-055638 pre-dawn.jpg
Rather than crossing the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek twice, I took what they call the "Rockwell Shortcut": instead of crossing, you scramble up onto some slabs and follow them along the north side of the valley. Then you descend into the brush for a while, then pop back out and traverse some very skinny ledges (9,500'):
20170830-064346 Rockwell Shortcut.jpg
At one point while I was bushwhacking, it started raining. I didn't really feel like getting soaked less than two hours in, so I hunkered down under an overhanging ledge and figured that given the already-lousy weather, I probably wasn't going to reach the summit -- but I'd see how far I could get, and who knows...

After the (in)famous "Ebersbacher Ledges," the next landmark was Lower Boy Scout Lake (10,330'), where I got my first look at Whitney. It looked like there was a chance that the weather might clear up a little:
20170830-083630 Lower Boy Scout Lake.jpg
The main "trail" goes left around the lake, but I followed another shortcut I'd read about, which stayed right of the lake and went up onto the big granite slabs. It wasn't really much shorter, but slabs are fun. The alternate route took me to the north side of Upper Boy Scout Lake (11,370'), whose upper end looks starkly alpine:
20170830-101421 Upper Boy Scout Lake.jpg
Whereas on the downstream side, near the outlet, there's a marshy area that's basically a bog:
20170830-101721 UBSL bog.jpg
Working my way up from Upper BSL toward Iceberg Lake, I discovered that I was under surveillance:
20170830-104629 coyote.jpg
The needles to the south of Whitney (Keeler Needle, Crooks Peak, etc.) had sun shining on them but swirling clouds behind them:
20170830-111135 Needles.jpg
It started raining, and I could hear rumbles of thunder, so I tried to take shelter again. I had a view of Whitney from my hiding place:
20170830-114809 thunderstorm.jpg
The rain let up and I continued uphill, hoping I could at least reach Iceberg Lake (12,640'). But then things took an ugly turn. The cloud deck started lowering until the summits of Whitney and its neighbors disappeared, and the thunder returned:
20170830-121443 lowering clouds.jpg
My turnaround point was at 12,240'; from there, I ran downhill, looking for a new place to hide while the rain started up again. I had rain gear with me, but I really didn't want to be out in the open with lightning on its way. An angled cliff did keep me dry for a few minutes, but eventually the overhanging wall got wet enough that it was dripping on me, then pouring on me. And then the hail started, so heavily that it accumulated on flat surfaces:
20170830-123932 accumulating hail.jpg
Through all of this, the thunder and lightning were nearly constant. A few lightning bolts were only about 1 second ahead of their thunderclaps (i.e., about 1000 feet away). That got the adrenaline going! I figured I was probably safe from a lightning strike because I was at the bottom of a granite valley; lightning would rather hit one of the high walls than me, right??



Anyway, it was pretty harrowing. Once the rain stopped and the thunder sounded like it had moved on to the northeast, I considered continuing on to the summit. The problem was that without access to a weather radar or a view to the southwest, I had no idea what, if anything, was coming next. I definitely didn't want to be on the summit of Whitney during an electrical storm! (And if I'd hauled ass all morning instead of lollygagging and taking pictures of flowers, I probably would have been right in the middle of the storm that I'd just ridden out under a cliff.)

I figured I'd better turn around and admit defeat. The sky over the Owens Valley below me was inky and scary:
20170830-130626 dark sky.jpg
On the bright side, knowing that a summit attempt was doomed allowed me to stop along the way and take all the wildflower pictures I wanted. I hadn't been expecting any flowers at all in late August, but the huge snowpack meant that the alpine flower show was delayed a month or so. I saw quite a few plants that were new to me; my favorites were Sierra primrose and Sierra columbine:
Primula suffrutescens.jpg
Aquilegia pubescens.jpg
But, despite the flowers, it really was disappointing. I ran into a few other hikers who were just like "it's OK, I'll try again in a couple weeks," but they were from California. From Portland, it's a full two-day drive in each direction, so it's not something I'm just going to do on a whim. And while it was pretty cool to be up at 12,000' in the High Sierra, the Mountaineers Route is in a steep-walled valley that doesn't really give you much in the way of views until you reach the summit. Having to return the way I came (because there's no way to connect to the Mt. Whitney Trail unless you reach the top) meant it was just an 8-mile day hike with 4,000' of elevation gain.

For the record, in hindsight, I could have kept going after the storms passed, because there weren't any more coming along that day; Lone Pine and the Owens Valley got all the action after about 1:00pm. But, again, I had no way of knowing that. And then, of course, this was the view from Lone Pine the next morning, dammit:
20170831-085922 sunshine.jpg
If I ever plan on doing Whitney again, I'll probably get permits for two separate dates at least two days apart, and then evaluate the weather forecast as those days draw nearer. Live and learn...
Last edited by adamschneider on February 10th, 2020, 12:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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texasbb
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Re: Mt. Whitney weather fail, 8/30/17

Post by texasbb » September 15th, 2017, 10:36 am

Cool report! It's a bummer to get turned back, but thunderstorms are about my favorite kind of Type-2 fun. Nice pictures and story. I've never seen pics of those needle things before.

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adamschneider
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Re: Mt. Whitney weather fail, 8/30/17

Post by adamschneider » September 15th, 2017, 11:24 am

texasbb wrote:Cool report! It's a bummer to get turned back, but thunderstorms are about my favorite kind of Type-2 fun. Nice pictures and story. I've never seen pics of those needle things before.
The needles are right next to Mt. Whitney, in a row to the south. They're arguably more interesting-looking than Whitney itself, and all except Aiguille Junior are 14k+. Sometimes people bag one or two of them in addition to Whitney, as long as they're up there.

Image

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Chip Down
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Re: Mt. Whitney weather fail, 8/30/17

Post by Chip Down » September 15th, 2017, 4:45 pm

My sympathies, Adam. This is why I don't travel. Well, one of the reasons. View-obscuring clouds are bad enough, but this went beyond a slight inconvenience. Still, it's apparent you had a reasonably good time.

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Don Nelsen
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Re: Mt. Whitney weather fail, 8/30/17

Post by Don Nelsen » September 15th, 2017, 8:07 pm

Thanks for the great TR and photos! I really like the one of the needles with sun on them and the clouds behind. Bummer you got rained out - I was lucky when I went a few years ago - (Aug. 20, 2000.) I've wanted to go back ever since so thanks to your report I get to live vicariously for awhile.

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markesc
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Re: Mt. Whitney weather fail, 8/30/17

Post by markesc » September 16th, 2017, 7:57 pm

REALLY cool video!

olderthanIusedtobe
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Re: Mt. Whitney weather fail, 8/30/17

Post by olderthanIusedtobe » September 20th, 2017, 1:31 pm

Bummer! I think I've been rained on ONCE during 5 different visits to the Eastern Sierras totaling over a month of days on trail in June, July and August of various years.

Agree, the picture of the Needles is awesome.

What was your doggy observer? Doesn't quite look like a coyote. Some kind of fox? One of the biggest coyotes I've ever seen was in Dusy Basin, a little north of where you were at. Near the town of Bishop (love that place!).

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Re: Mt. Whitney weather fail, 8/30/17

Post by adamschneider » September 20th, 2017, 3:03 pm

olderthanIusedtobe wrote:What was your doggy observer? Doesn't quite look like a coyote. Some kind of fox?
I thought for sure it was a fox when I saw it... but if it was, it would have to be a Sierra Nevada Red Fox, which is super-rare and isn't known to be anywhere south of Yosemite. Still, just to be sure, I submitted my photos to the Cal DFW web page about the SNRF, and someone wrote me back, saying:

"I sent this around to a few other red fox researchers and the consensus is that the animal is a coyote. A bit of a funky looking coyote, but a coyote nonetheless."

olderthanIusedtobe
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Re: Mt. Whitney weather fail, 8/30/17

Post by olderthanIusedtobe » September 20th, 2017, 3:30 pm

Definitely funky looking for a coyote. Funky Coyote...that could be a good name for a band.

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Re: Mt. Whitney weather fail, 8/30/17

Post by drm » September 21st, 2017, 7:12 am

This brings back so many memories, having summited Whitney a few times by various routes way back in the 80s when I lived in California. We used the Mountaineers Route (class 4) as a descent route for the East Face (5.6). The Ebersbacher Ledges, Upper Boy Scout Lake. In those days, permits were just for normal backpacking. A day trip by any route required no permit.

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