Whitney Portal 

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.

www.maximuspress.com/

"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!

......waiting

~Susan

Looks like the guidebook is delayed to Winter 2007.

It's winter 2007. Hope to see that new guide soon, Marty. Lots of recent FA activity. I've seen the Portal proofs, it'll be a good guide.

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:

www.safeclimbing.org/areas/california/whitneyportal.htm
(sorry, can't seem to get the thing to leave the ".htm" alone)

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.

New guide is ready to ship. Order your copy today at Maximus Press

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.

How late in the season can one reasonably expect to climb here?

Late October, early/mid November typically. If tripping to get there, planning anything later than that is getting risky. In light winters trips can even be managed year round if there is enough time between storms for melt.

A good share of the routes face south, and walls like The Goucho, Roadwork, and The Poolhall are lower so a little warmer and less of a problem if there is some snow. But it's 8,000' so by November it can get frigid when things go in the shade.

The other problem is that once big enough fall storms hit the road is closed (at least technically), also physically if there's enough snow - even if some walls do melt back out.

In summary, if you want to be reasonably comfortable, and have all walls accessible, plan on early November being the end of the good window. But, as mentioned it can still vary depending on the harshness of the particular years weather. Long answer to a simple question, I know.

fyi - if you're tripping through, it would be good to have the guide. Lot's of stuff in the guide that isn't posted here. Plus there's stuff that is too new for the guide also. Plenty to do. And the ASCA replacement effort has now done the majority of the routes - at all walls except perhaps the Portal Buttress where some of the longer routes haven't been replaced (slackers!).