SummitPost.org

Does anyone know if the road to the Barcroft lab is open?

I believe the answer is "yes, but there's still a fair amount of snow" based on partial first hand knowledge and partial second hand info. On the way home yesterday we made a side trip up the White Mountain road to the Ancient Bristlecone Pines. Above 9000' the road had patches of snow several inches deep in one of the lanes but it never blocked both lanes, so the road to the pines was passable by 2WD, motorcycles and even bicycles. The ranger at the entrance said that the road to Barcroft was open but that someone earlier that day had gotten stuck in the snow and spent several hours getting unstuck. I have no idea what that person was driving however.

I was up there last Tuesday. The sign said 4wd only still. We parked our truck at the patriarch grove turn off and were going to ride our mountain bikes to the gate. Then a mini cooper zoomed by. We decided screw the bikes and continued to drive to the gate in our 2wd Tundra. No problems at all and the mini cooper even made it just fine. Just proceed with caution. The only problem we encountered was the relentless wind. Had to have been a least 75mph after the observation deck. Anyone know if this is typical or if we just had bad luck that day? Almost made to the top but turned around because I felt like I was going to blow off the mountain.

I can still see some snow from the weekend storm. It's melting pretty quick though.

The conditions on White Mountain were very good on June 3rd, pretty much snow-free until about 13,000 feet. Higher than that, some snow patches I would guess to be 50 feet long at most are present but are definitely not a problem since the trail switchbacks are not steep and the patches can easily be circumvented if needed. They were hard enough on the way up to hold your weight without slipping and soft enough on the descent to provide some pleasant cushioning. Under those conditions, you could climb the peak in tennis shoes... In addition, there were very few people on the mountain (we only saw 5 people total), which I found surprising for a week-end. You can judge for yourself with the following pictures.

First clear view of White Mountain:


Looking up the summit ridge:


Looking down the same ridge from the summit: