Whitney Portal Road

A short, dramatic switchback climb out of Lone Pine through the Alabama Hills to the foot of Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48.

Whitney Portal Road leaves Lone Pine on the Owens Valley floor and runs about thirteen miles west to Whitney Portal at roughly 8,360 feet, the trailhead for Mount Whitney. The lower miles thread the boulder mazes of the Alabama Hills, a film-location landscape that has stood in for countless Westerns, before the road steepens into a series of tight, exposed switchbacks pinned to the granite east face of the Sierra. The views back over Owens Valley and Owens Lake are enormous, and the contrast between high desert and alpine granite is abrupt. The road is a county route with no state number, paved but not winter-maintained, typically open from May until the first heavy snow closes the upper grade. Mind the unguarded switchback edges, the rockfall on the upper section, and the lack of snow clearing late and early in the season.