The return of snow has already claimed one life on the highest mountain in the continental United States, with the death of a hiker on the slippery Mount Whitney, according to the Inyo County Sheriff's Office.
Over the weekend, the hiker fell on the famous “99 Switchbacks” section of the main trail, said Lindsey Stine, community outreach coordinator for the Sheriff's Office. The switchbacks begin just above Trail Camp at nearly 12,000 feet, where many hikers spend the night before setting off early in the morning toward the 14,500-foot summit.
In the summer, when the trail is dry, the switchback section is a long slog, winding back and forth for up to two miles and nearly 2,000 vertical feet.
When it snows heavily, as it did this month, the trail gets buried and the entire slope becomes dangerously steep.
Wes Ostgaard, who said he had climbed Mount Whitney four times, posted on Facebook that conditions Saturday were so dangerous that he and his climbing partners decided to turn around.
“The winds were extremely intense and with the recent snowfall, the wind was blowing snow in our faces,” Ostgaard wrote. Snow covered the trail and, in many places, made it “invisible,” he wrote.
As Ostgaard and his companions descended the switchbacks, they encountered the body of another hiker who had apparently fallen onto a section of steel safety cables and then slid about 70 feet further.
“I think it is very unlikely that he survived,” Ostgaard wrote of the hiker. “There was a good amount of blood from [colliding with] the cables and a lot of blood around a rock with which it made contact.”
Ostgaard used Starlink to contact his father at around 12:30 p.m., who then contacted emergency services. A helicopter arrived about four hours later, Ostgaard wrote.
Another hiker that day, Kirill Novitskiy, encountered the same conditions on the switchbacks, but made the “wrong decision” to continue climbing.
He made up for it only with microspikes (small metal studs that attach to the soles of shoes and provide winter traction on flat terrain) or on gentle slopes where falling wouldn't be a big deal.
But microspikes are notoriously unsuitable for winter mountaineering, when a fall could be fatal.
As often happens in the mountains, when Novitskiy returned to the steep switchbacks after a few hours of traveling on relatively flat terrain to and from the summit, he found that conditions had deteriorated so much that he was in real danger and very ill-equipped.
“I had a couple of dangerous spots where the trail turned into a slope full of powder snow and it was very easy to slip,” Novitskiy wrote on Facebook. “The worst part of the way back was the curves. Almost the entire way was covered in powder snow blown up by the wind, it was very difficult to move forward with only micro peaks.”
Near the cables he saw a pair of trekking poles with no one around them and then met a group of five hikers at the bottom of the switchbacks who told him about the accident.
Anyone attempting to climb Mount Whitney from this point on in the winter season should carry crampons (much larger spikes that attach firmly to mountaineering boots and dig deep into the snow and ice to prevent falls) and an ice axe.
Experts also advise traveling in a group and carrying a satellite communication device to call for help if something goes wrong.
At this time, the Sheriff's Office has not released the identity of the hiker who died.
In January, a Texas hiker died after attempting to climb Mount Whitney in bad weather. His body was found at an elevation of 12,000 feet near the North Fork Lone Pine Creek Trail.
In June, a 14-year-old hiker became delirious on Mount Whitney and fell off a 120-foot cliff. He survived.
