Mt. Whitney
March 2005
By: Tom Ritchie
Slide show of the CMC 2005 winter attempt of Mt Whitney via the mountaineer’s route. Heavy late winter snows required CMC members Garrick Meeka, Chris O’Donnell, Tom Ritchie and Dennis Wasserman to start their climb 3 miles below the trail head. Deteriorating weather greeted them at Iceberg Lake confining them to their tents the afternoon before the summit bid. The team turned back half way up the mountaineer’s couloir on summit day. The retreat off the Iceberg Lake plateau was made interesting with 18” of new snow and about 30 meters visibility. A true winter climb. Sierra weather in the winter is usually better – see photos of the 2004 winter trip. Photographs by Tom Ritchie.
Click the image below for a video clip of this trip.
*Note - approx. 8MB file size, may take a few minutes to download
Page updated on
September 30, 2009