The Whitney Portal is home to many cragging routes as well as some longer, older Beckey routes. The sought-after climb is Bony Fingers, but there is supposedly quite a bit of development going on there in recent years. Unfortunately, comprehensive information is unavailable... I think.
Getting There
Take Whitney Portal Road west from the town of Big Pine, past Alabama Hills, and up into the mountains until it dead ends at the trailhead for Mt. Whitney. Pretty simple.
P-1 start at a left-leaning dihedral which gains a ledge. Negotiate some brush then head up a right-leaning layback, over a small roof (pretty stiff for .7) and to a tree belay stance, flake for anchor.P-2 Climb up and right to an arete with nice jams and gear to a wild roof move (lieback) and another 20 or so feet to a belay.P-3 Up and right to a stem/face. Crack comes and go and with it a little run-out. A welcome fixed piton and more moves lea...[more]
The Whitney Portal Road leaves from the town of Lone Pine about 40 miles south of Big Pine. Head west from Big Pine if you want to go to the Palisades or Temple Crag.
Marty Lewis is coming out with a new guidebook entitled "Bishop Area Rock Climbs—The climbing Guide to the Eastern Sierra-South" which covers the Whitney Portal area. Coming out this Summer.
"Marty Lewis is coming out with a new guidebook entitled "Bishop Area Rock Climbs—The climbing Guide to the Eastern Sierra-South" which covers the Whitney Portal area. Coming out this Summer."
Yeah LuLu, where's our guides? Less handyman, more publication!
For those interested in the Portal but concerned about those old 1/4" manky bolts: Thanks to ASCA support over 250 bolts have been replaced with stainless fatties in the past couple of years, and next year will see more replacement activity. And of course, everything new has bolts that are up to code. For information on which routes have been replaced:
The list is fairly current as of this post, but still needs an update for Candlelight Buttress where all but a handful of bolts where replaced late in the year.
Thanks to the ASCA, Johnny Woodward, Darrell Hensell, SP Parker, and everyone else who invested their time in rebolting this area. Thanks also to Peter Croft and Marty Lewis for putting together such a nice guide. Now I am psyched to go climb there.
Whitney Portal
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