Whitney conditions

Anyone been up Whitney recently? Thinking of taking advantage of the heat wave next week and trying the East Buttress. Curious how much snow and ice there is on the route. Also wondering if the Mountaineer's Route is softening in the afternoons, and how the approach looks. Any other beta welcome :) thanks in advance!

No idea of conditions but if you need a partner hmu! 7343098631

Mountaineer's Route definitely gets soft in the afternoons in this warmer weather. Learned this the hard way and postholed up to my chest a few times trying to get down from Iceberg Lake last year during similar weather

I was up there last week. Not on whitney but a neighboring peak. Could still see some snow up on east butt but looks mostly dry

Bumping to see what things look like coming into next week.  Heading down to camp at Iceberg next week and hopefully tick off a few things. The weather has been looking pretty mild until what looks like a little spring chill and snow over the next couple of days.  

Curious about the creek crossings and just general conditions if anyone has been up the N. Fork approach, and any other early season beta from Whitney/Russel.  

Paul Lwrote:

until what looks like a little spring chill and snow over the next couple of days.  

phylp phylpwrote:

Just a little Spring chill!

That's the one! 

What the rest of the post says.. I'm not on the FB. 

[edit] was able to read the post anyway. We'll be coming in post-storm, and do have contingency plans if it's just looking no good for the Whitney basin.  

Paul Lwrote:

That's the one! 

What the rest of the post says.. I'm not on the FB. 

[edit] was able to read the post anyway. We'll be coming in post-storm, and do have contingency plans if it's just looking no good for the Whitney basin.  

Could be wonderful, I have no idea! I just couldn’t resist sharing their post when I saw “a little Spring chill”! Have a blast!

Just a little follow-up for anyone who may be heading up.  Take this from someone with zero knowledge of how this past week's conditions compare to normal. We climbed to camp on 6/1, summitted 6/2. 

- Approach to Lower Boyscout is clear and cruiser, creek crossings are easy

- Snow begins to appear above Lower Boyscout.  We took a high trail after switchbacking up from the end of the trees, and encountered a fair amount of snow to cross, with a good bit of moderate post-holing.  On the way back, we stayed lower coming off the slabs and found a switchback that brought us almost down to the lake shore for the final traverse around, and less snow travel overall. 

- Campsites around Upper Boyscout are all clear of snow, but there is snow in the area. 

- Approach from Upper Boyscout to Iceberg Lake has a good bit of snow across the slabs, but made travel pretty easy.  The final approach to Iceberg has two possible snow gullies, with the first one being more continuous and easy, imo.  The second one we came down, and had the only fresh water seep we found after leaving UBS, but also seemed to have a potentially unstable snow bridge over a pit pretty close to the seep.  Iceberg basin is still entirely snow, and the lake is completely frozen with no access to water. 

- We made the entire approach without crampons. The snow was fairly soft, and there had been a storm the night before that laid down an inch or so of an odd styrofoam texture hail/snow that stuck over the existing snowpack and made things more grippy. 

- We climbed the East Buttress, and there was not-inconsequential snow from pitch 3 onwards, ice on the shady rock and in the cracks.  Definitely made route-finding trickier. 

- The descent coulouir was basically snow the whole way down, except for the rock band about 250' from the summit. The upper portion above the notch was steep and very firm, we were descending close to dark.  One of our group of four down climbed the whole way to the notch in full mountaineering boots + aluminum crampons, one in our group down climbed to rock band in approach shoes + aluminum crampons, two of us rapped from the top with one 60m (one in boots + crampons, one in approach shoes + crampons) then joined the third person and did one double 60m rap to the notch.  We all had lightweight axes.  

Conditions from 6/21

There was a small zone to get water from iceberg lake. The.notch is still pretty filled in. Climbed in early with one axe and microspikes. Felt decently secure.