Mount Whitney (Mountaineer's Route ski descent) - April 4 2025
Mount Whitney Group, Lone Pine, California
4419m
Finally, 3 years after my first (and failed) attempt at somewhat "real mountaineering", the time arrived to tackle Mount Whitney. Since that time, I discovered that ski mountaineering exists (and is awesome), learned a lot more about good logistics, snow science, etc. At the start of April this year, the snowpack had largely stabilised in California, there was a good storm (which brought me to Tahoe the previous few days) that gave some powder on top, and there was a gap in the biggest obstacle to a winter Whitney ascent: wind. So, I messaged Kelly, who was also waiting for a window to arrive for it, convinced my buddy Eric that bagging the highest peak in the continental US was better than camping and touring small stuff near Tahoe, and we agreed to meet up in Lone Pine on Thursday night for a Friday ascent. I picked Eric up on the Wednesday from Reno airport, and we had a fairly casual drive down to prep for the summit. Kelly got in pretty late Thursday night from the Vegas airport flying from Vancouver, but somehow we all managed to collect ourselves for a 4am departure from our motel in Lone Pine to give it a go.
The road to Whitney Portal was under construction, so we had to take a decent detour around to the north. The roads were normal dirt roads, but the indirect route added some annoying kilometres and time to the drive in. We had beta that the road was only soft-gated at the 2000m point below the large switchback, and hard gated at the higher ~2300m gate instead. Thankfully, this was true, and we drove up with really just 1 large rockfall to avoid, which thankfully was easy to just drive around. The surprise came at the higher gate, which was where I started my attempt in 2022. When we got there, the first thing I thought was "I bet I can get around that" 😄 So, Kelly got out, gave me a spot, and sure enough, we managed to crawl around it on the north side, and saved ourselves a good few miles of tedious road walking! The road was totally clear from there all the way up to the "final gate" which was above 2500m, just before the road splits off to the various trailheads, campsites, and other installations at the top. No idea why it was closed, there was even a truck up there from some park staff, probably.
So, with the day now brought to under 2000m of gain and probably under 15km as well, we were pretty stoked. We got our skis and boots onto our packs (there was inconsistent snow at the trailhead, definitely not skinnable), and started the walk at 4:48am, a fairly alpine, if not ridiculously early start.
We cranked out the (mostly bare) trail to the North Fork/Main Trail junction in about half an hour, keeping a pretty chill and measured pace, given the size of day we had in front of us. Even getting this far without skinnable snow made us happy we had our trail runners and didn't boot from the car.
As we got closer to the 2km mark, the snow got more consistent, but with our very cold temps, early start, and "it being the desert", it made sense for us to just continue following the bootprints in our trail runners, leaving our skis for more open terrain and maybe softer snow as well.
The sun started to poke out at around 6am, which was nice just from a navigational perspective. Once it did come up, I noticed we weren't quite on the same track I'd used (fairly easily) in my previous attempt, but it was where all the bootprints were, so it was probably fine. We did have to bushwhack a little to get across the creek at one point, but it was only for a few minutes, and largely travel was quite easy. As we got higher, there were a few more crossings, but thankfully all fairly easy rock-hopping, and with the snow so firm, we didn't have to worry about the entrances/exits for them.
After the crossing above, we stayed on climber's left of the creek, and started following a surprisingly long bootpack up the valley towards Lower Boy Scout Lake. We were treated to quite the nice sunrise, but after that, it was a bit of a mental game to keep going. We'd arbitrarily decided the natural stopping point of the top of the hill above Lower Boy Scout as the best place to have our first break, but the terrain just kept rolling over on the horizon and continuing, so it took us a while to get there, until around 7:30am 😅 Once we got there, though, we had a nice break, and it was also a convenient place to transition, and start the skinning portion of the day.
We had some food here (even I had a little snack, despite my digestion being what it is, I knew this wasn't the day to bonk on no calories, a few bathroom breaks would be better than running out of steam), struggled into our very cold ski boots, then debated whether or not we should bring shoes up. We decided on strapping them to our packs, in the unlikely but possible case that the couloir was dry enough that we wouldn't be comfortable scrambling in our ski boots. None of us were keen to take them off on such a cold day, but we'd rather have the option compared to feeling the need, and not having them, so our packs stayed full, and we continued up. Surprisingly, we had no tracks to follow from this point. There was a boot path heading to the lake itself, but we couldn't find its continuation, and our tracks were the only ski ones. So Kelly, being his usual self, plowed right on ahead to break trail (thankfully with fairly low ski penetration in the light powder that fell on the well-settled base).
The start of the skin track was a bit sharky while contouring above the lake, but once we started heading more directly uphill, things improved. We managed to keep quite a good pace going in this section, as we made it to Upper Boy Scout Lake in about an hour, which is about 300m of gain for that time, not bad for a big day!
Much to my surprise, Kelly actually asked to trade off trail-breaking duty here (he's usually just a machine that goes right up ahead with no prompting), so I swapped in and cut us a skin track above the lake, and started making the long traverse towards the next steep slope that guarded Iceberg Lake.
I got us a decent ways up before we started swapping more consistently between all 3 party members, but definitely not all 300m needed to get to the base of the steep slope I'd have wanted to get to 😅. I wasn't feeling the elevation nearly as much as I did in 2022, probably due to my few days in Tahoe beforehand, but still, I didn't want to get myself tuckered out before we even started the meat of the climb.
We wound our way around the rocks and to the base of the steep slope in about 90 minutes, definitely slower than the lower-elevation section to Upper Boy Scout (though we didn't really notice it at the time). Once we got to the steep bit, we realised that it wasn't super skinnable with the snowpack we had, so we decided to boot up the first (and slightly lower) snow slope we came across that looked like it went up to where angles eased off again.
While we didn't consciously realise we'd slowed down a bit before this point... we definitely noticed once we were on the bootpack 😅. The boot penetration wasn't terrible, but it also wasn't great, requiring a swift kick and a compression before you could step up. That combined with the now-above-11,000ft (where I do typically notice elevation effects in the Rockies back north of 49) altitude hit us pretty good. We had to trade off lead a lot in this section.
After nearly 40 minutes, we finally got up the stupid bootpack, got our skis back on, and made the final walk over to the little bench before Iceberg Lake. Not sure why that bootpack was so brutal vs the skinning, but it was. I, at least, think I contributed pretty well to the trail-breaking efforts in that part, which felt nice (mentally, physically it sucked 😆).
I had another bathroom break before we started skinning up again, so I had some ground to make up once again. Sadly, unlike the last one, this one was at nearly 3900m, so catching up was pretty damn hard! Kelly had started his way up the base of the couloir, and despite that disadvantage, this time I wasn't getting closer nearly as quickly 😅
We skinned up as far as made sense in the couloir, but eventually it got steep and firm enough (around 4030m) that we swapped to booting it (this put us at around 12:30pm, or over 7.5 hours into the day!). It was not too long before this point that I finally caught up 😅
As we were coming up the couloir, we noticed a black spot below us. Turns out some madlad had come up after us with naught but his boots, a running pack, and a serious amount of mettle! He caught up to and passed us in a depressingly short amount of time, though this had the added benefit of giving us someone who was relatively fresh to break trail, which was very welcome, as our progress could best be described as "the only thing glacial left in the Sierra Nevada".
The snow in the couloir got firmer and more difficult to maintain grip in without our crampons as we went up. Eric was probably the smart one and put his on early, but the rest of us suffered up on our toes for an extra hour 😅. Partway through, I had to take yet another bathroom break, which this time really took it out of me. Sadly, given the steep and firm couloir, I couldn't really chill and take food/water out of my pack to recharge, so I just suffered up once I was done with not a lot left in the energy tank. Finally, at around 2:15pm, or 9.5 hours in, we stopped at about 4250m, where the snow got less continuous, and we stashed our skis, and put our crampons on. That allowed me to have some water and a snack, which got me feeling much better. I'm glad we budgeted a lot of time for the ascent, because it was definitely seeming necessary given how much we'd slowed down past the lakes.
A nice benefit of the bootpack, other than "not carrying skis on our backs" was that it quickly brought us into the sunlight again, which felt awesome. We were prepared for "unpleasant but tolerable" winds, but the weather was actually super amenable! Cold enough to keep the snow good, but warm+calm enough to not be uncomfortable, even if we sat around for a bit. I was feeling pretty warm at the bottom with insulated snowpants, but with our lower pace and higher elevation here, I was super happy to have them.
While I was feeling way better at this point, Eric is more of a ski tourer before peakbagger, and wasn't as happy with the whole "crampons on rocks" sort of terrain we were now in, so he took his time doing his best to get used to that and keep pushing up through the couloir. It took about half an hour to gain the ~70m to the start of The Notch, where our mysterious friend had gone up, and which I'd expected us to go up as well.
The "standard traverse", left, and The Notch, right
While I waited for Eric to crest out of the couloir, Kelly checked out The Notch, and decided it was not for him, citing his distaste for downsloping, half-covered rocks (understandable). I probably would've just dealt with the BS for the sake of laziness (it is much more direct than the big traverse around to the broad western slopes), but I was happy to do what the others were comfortable with, especially since Eric wasn't enjoying the relatively easier upper couloir. So, I decided to start making up for all the following I did in the main couloir, and started breaking trail along the traverse of the north face.
As we made our way along the face, we saw a few snowfields that seemed to lead up to the ridge. At first, we walked past, as the goal was to get onto flatter/easier ground by roughly following the summertime Mountaineer's Route. However, as we continued, our progress wasn't particularly fast (each step just takes extra work when breaking trail and at elevation), and I also saw some unpleasant wind-affected snow further along the face, which at best would be annoying travel, and at worst wind slabs over some rocky exposure could take us for an unpleasant ride. With that in mind, we agreed that we should just suck it up and boot our way up the snow as best we could, and get to the ridge a little more directly. So, after about 20 minutes of traversing, we started to head up a snow ramp about 60% of the distance between The Notch and the official summer route.
The way up the face from there started out good, but unfortunately ended up being a bit thin, causing us to have to deal with barely-covered rocks that didn't give a whole lot of purchase. It was manageable, just annoying, though, so we pushed through, and a bit after 4pm, we'd got ourselves just below the ridge where we'd top out onto the summit plateau. Of course, I had yet another urgent bathroom break to deal with there (really not my day in that regard...), so while I dealt with that, Kelly scoped out a couple routes to top out onto the ridge.
It took a little exploration to find an easy way up, but we eventually figured out a route that was only a mild scramble to gain the plateau, and by 4:30pm, we finally made it up, and while the summit wasn't quite in sight, the terrain was simple enough that we took our crampons off, and knew it was just a small slog left to get to the summit.
That simple summit walk felt really long, but was only 10–15 minutes in reality. We knew we were pushing up against the sunset, though, and wanted to get at least the skiing done before dark, so we didn't linger too long up there. Just enough time for a few photos, then we planned to layer up and do all the other transition-y things we could before heading down from the relative comfort of the hut.
Team photo(s). I'll let you decide which one is better
Of course, when we tried to actually get into the shelter to layer up and whatnot, it turned out to be closed 🙃. So, we made do with a few sips of water and just started making our way down towards our skis again. Heading down was definitely easier than heading up, though Eric was starting to bonk a bit from the exhaustion (he'd taken a bit of time off from mountaineering lately, and was definitely pushing a little for this one). We got back to our exit point from the plateau in about 10 minutes, then it was time to deal with the downclimb of our variable snow ascent ramp, which was what we were dreading the most.
The downclimb wasn't too bad, but Eric was both tired and not a fan of crampons on rock, so he was struggling quite a bit to make it down comfortably. We all tried to make the downclimb without crampons to alleviate this concern, but the snow was still quite firm, so after the first few steps down to the flat spot where we'd started scrambling, we all put them back on. The terrain was gentle enough for me to downclimb in my typical facing-outwards style, but the less ridiculous members of the party indeed were facing in for most of it 😄
Of course, right as we were making our careful downclimb, the wind decided it was time to show up, so waiting became a much more annoying task than it otherwise would've been 😅. Kelly went ahead in front, I made sure that I could see him and Eric, and played traffic cop to make sure we all got down okay while Eric brought up (down?) the rear 😄. After the rockier bits, we had to get down the slope above, which I just did my typical "kick-flailing" technique where you sit down and kick your heels in/out of the slope to achieve a fast+lazy, mostly-controlled form of descent. The others downclimbed like normal human beings 🙂.
After that, it was an easy walk over to the couloir, then a rocky walk down towards our skis. It took longer than we'd hoped to keep everyone comfortable and with Eric fading in strength, but we managed to make it to our gear before 7:00 😅. We did our best to transition with haste, and started skiing, hoping to get as much done as we could with light.
Our legs were pretty gassed from the long ascent, and the top of the couloir, while looking powdery, had some pretty devious icy bits in it making ripping turns challenging. It was, however, way better than walking down!
Trying a new way to add some video into things. Also finally got a decent camera (thanks for the old GoPro Aunt Crystal, but I needed a 360 camera, turns out I lack the Fs to give to make sure things are framed right when I'm in the freezing cold about to ski down 😆). Hopefully my exhausting skiing isn't too unbearable to watch.
The skiing started out with some sharky ice chunks making sending it a bit difficult, but once we got a little further down the couloir, it got more consistently soft, and by the end Kelly and I managed to overcome our exhausting to link a few turns to actually enjoy the actually quite excellent snow! Eric, sadly, was a little pooped at this point and was just getting down 😅. On a Whitney day-push, I think that's perfectly reasonable.
Below Iceberg Lake, things got more variable. Eastern slopes got baked by the sun and were pretty crusty, but western or otherwise more shaded slopes were still nice and soft. We had a mix of good and better than walking skiing down to Upper Boy Scout Lake, where things got dim enough that we pulled our headlamps out. I was happy I invested in a bright enough one to ski properly with, so I took the lead scouting us a way down, at least until it got thin enough that we'd just follow our skin track religiously.
The descent to Lower Boy Scout took around an hour, though if you have a party of skiers still able to all link their turns confidently, honestly it could probably be less than half of that. We did a lot of stopping and waiting on the way down.
We had to carry our skis a little through some rock bands we were able to skin through in the morning (they're a little more durable than your bases), then transition at around 3170m, where we had stopped to put our skis on in the morning. If I was solo or "calling shots", I'd have kept skis on longer, until we got to the first creek crossing, but the others weren't as enthused with night skiing, so we just booted it down from that point. I kept my ski boots on, knowing we had a good amount of snow to get down, and I prefer heel-stepping with my boots vs careful steps in trail runners in that kind of terrain, but the others swapped back to shoes here.
From there, it was a simple, if slow walk down. Eric was definitely more gassed than he was hoping for, so we kept quite a leisurely pace on the way out. We kept together for most of it, until I had yet another bathroom break near the end of the snow-covered portion of the trail, where the others just went ahead, since I'd be able to catch up. Once I did, we were back on the obvious dirt trail, so Kelly and I went ahead to the car to get it warmed up, deal with all our gear, etc. so we could make our exit expediently.
The whole walk took about 2 hours, but it was only ~3.5km, so you can definitely crank it out faster if you're not totally zonked. Once we were at the car, we had time to pack our bags up nicely, get into shoes (oh how nice it was getting out of my boots after a 17.5-hour day), and relax before Eric showed up, got his stuff sorted, and we made our way out.
The drive out felt a lot longer than on the way in 😄, but we made it back to town just in time to get some dinner before the last fast food joint closed. Kelly went to bed quickly as he wanted to bag another peak before heading to the airport in the evening, while I made some time to replenish a few calories before sleeping. In the morning, we said goodbye to Kelly, had a leisurely breakfast, then started driving east towards Ely for the next ultra...
Overall, despite some challenges, this was a pretty awesome day. I can't be mad getting a p3000 (in the top 100 in the world for prominence!), skiing it, and getting out safe. Plus, my bad leg didn't even hurt for the ski down, which was a pleasant surprise. Great time with some great friends, I'm so happy to have some redemption.