Saturday morning just below Whitney Portal. Todd and I suite up for some winter mountaineering.

Keeler Needles and Mt. Whitney at dawn about 1.5 miles from the portal.

6:30AM start

Found the igloo that the rescue training group made.

Todd managed to get in with his snow shoes on

The poor snow man lost most of his appendages so we put them back as best we could figure.

We might not have gotten it perfect.

Main trail head.

This chatty fellow said hello when we got to the North Fork crossing

Skinning up the drainage on my new sticks. The weather starts to roll in.

We decided to break trail up the left side of the canyon rather than stay on the icey tracks and thin snow bridges on the right

The weather really starting to turn now. A little snow is nice.

30-50mph gusting winds and snow, not so nice. We had to pack it in at 1:30PM that day at LBSL. We were hoping to make it a lot further today. =(

After 16 hours in a tent, we were up at 6Am the next day. Todd and I started making water and dinner from last night.

Good morning. WOW!

It took a while for direct sunlight to hit camp so we stomed down a little trail to a sunny spot so Todd could dry his sleeping bag.

North of LBSL, below Carillon

I got to break trail above Lower Boy Scout Lake that morning. A few others followed Todd and me up.

Todd is a machine in those snow shoes.

Up on the slabs.

Just below UBSL. I was dying to carve some turns.

Time to lock the heels and see what it is like to ski with a 45lb pack

It took a few turns to get used to the extra weight sliding around

but it was fun!

nice fresh tracks

To give better perspective, there are two people just right of center in this pictuure of the drainage

You can see my tracks way, way at the top of the drainage and all the way down the left side. Ever ski an expert run with a heavy pack? What a workout!

Just above the main trail now

Todd back on the main trail.

Looking up the sadle of the main trail above the portal.

ICY. The hell you say?

My pack was over 60lbs with the skiis mounted so the second we got to the road, i took the oportinity to lighten the load. =)

Back at the car! This sign was a bit of a joke. The road was covered with boulders the size of small cars and looked like the surface of the mars

Toady took me up for some aerobatics over south OC in a Decathlon