[pct-l] Mt. Whitney question

[dude at fastmail.ca (dude)]

its hard to estimate these sorts of things, but I would have to say 
that you should be able to do this in under 16-18 hrs easy, and you 
could probably do it in about 8 hrs or less if you are in shape and in 
a hurry.  

Its 5.8 miles from Guitar Lake to the summit, and the climb is only 
2800 ft.  That section should take you absolutely no longer than 6 
hrs.  If it takes you longer than that, you are *SLOW*. You should be 
able to go at least 1 mph if you are in "fairly good shape".  I did 
this section in 1998 and I think that we did this section in 4 hrs or 
so (I'm not positive about that because we hiked from Forrester Pass to 
the Whitney Summit that day, which is about 20 miles and took us about 
10 hrs).

>From the Summit to the Portal, its 11.5 miles and 6500' decent.  Even 
though its downhill, the upper sections of the trail are fairly rough 
and its pretty slow-going.  Once you get below Trail camp, the trail 
get faster, and below Outpost camp the trail is downright easy.  In 
1998, we decended from the summit to the portal in about 4 or 5 hrs, 
but we were really cruising.  you should be able to maintain 2mph on 
the decent, which would put you at 6 hrs for that section also.  It you 
are just completely exhausted, you still should be able to maintain 1 
mph.  I have guided some pretty out-of-shape people up whitney and even 
the slowest in our group would go up and down in about 1 mph.

So there you have my estimate...  

(1)  worst case scenario = 1 mph over 17.3 miles = 17.3 hrs. 

(2)  Reasonable case scenario = 2 mph over 17.3 miles = 8.65 hrs.  

(3)  Near best case sacenario = (2.5 mph on 5.8 mile uphill section = 
2.3 hrs) + (3 mph on 11.5 mile downhill section = 3.8 hrs) = 6.1 hrs 
total

Remember, this doesn't include breaks or time spent on the summit. :-)

HTH.

peace,
dude




>> From Guitar Lake how long would it take a
> in-fairly-good-shape-45-year-old-guy-with-possibly-gimpy-knees-
> after-3-days-hiking-from-Cottonwood-Pass to get up to
> Whitney and then back down the other side to Whitney
> Portal?
> 
> My knees thank you in advance.
> 
> Squatch
> www.walkpct.com
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