August 18th Whitney via the Mountaineer's Route


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This was the main target we had driven up for, Emerson was an acclimatization hike of sorts.  I had not been up the mountaineer's route before, but Chris had done it a couple times.  Chris' coworker had obtained lottery permits for Monday and had a sweet condo in Mammoth.  After the Emerson climb we spent the night in Mammoth and headed down to lone pine (at the whitney portal family camp) for Sunday night.  The group of hikers were all really cool people and we had a good time on our rest day, including a wonderful chicken rotisserie dinner, which is one of the best meals i've ever eaten while camping.

We made plans to start hiking around 4, and were only 8 minutes off our goal (started at 4:08).  We made the turn off at the north fork lone pine creek crossing (right before the crossing), and were at the lower boyscout lake just after sunrise.  From here as we continued up the route, I stayed too far too the left (and everyone followed me); At the time this felt like the safest option in the talus/scree, however we ended up paying for it when we were literally hedged in by TONs of shrubs (willows? they had a bunch of white cottoney things on em like dandelion seeds).  We were able to navigate through the shrubs on what appeared to be use trails, but it definitely took much longer than if we had stayed on the rocks/talus to the right.

We got to Iceberg lake (and the sweet view of Russell) at 830.  Here we refilled on water and food and got ready for the climb (helmets).  We had chosen to not bring a rope, gear or harnesses.  The third class up to the notch was mostly uneventful, the piece that i remember was that one of the group had decided to do an "icebucket challenge" so we filled our helmets up with corn snow near the top (~13000ft) and dumped it on him.  There was one section where it appeared a large chock stone was blocking the gully, but we were able to ascend on climber's left via slabby stuff.

When we hit the notch, the group decided that they did not want to ascend the first chute to the left as there was ice on much of it.  I think if we had brought a rope and some anchor stuff (to use as a hand line) the others would have been fine ascending the chute, so I'll take this as a lesson for future trips.  Bring a rope if someone in the group might need it.  Due to this, we contoured around the mountain to the left.  After a couple hundred feet, we followed a leftward ramp up and were able to join with the whitney trail to the summit which we reached shortly after 1245.

The group consensus was that we should take the trail down instead of the mountaineer's route and we started down at around 115.  Having a group of 6, and staying together for the most part meant that the descent took a fair amount of time.  At Mirror lake however, we decided to just go out without waiting; Chris and I reached Whitney portal at 6:30.  This worked out wonderfully as there was a group of hikers there that needed their picture taken; and were extremely generous with their food and cold beer.