A piece of the Sierra High Route: Granite Park to Pine Creek trailhead

We aren't perfectly situated for morning sun (another way of looking at this is that our planning was perfect but the sun just rose in the wrong place), but we still get sun while getting everything packed up. We're underway by 8:15. Today is almost entirely down, down, down. We start in light forest on a nice clear path with good views back; easy going. As we get lower the trees get denser until we're clearly in a pine forest. We pass a few lakes and, at Lower Pine Lake, see the first people we've seen since day one (not counting that guy we barely noticed on day two). At Lower Pine Lake we also get close to the crazy striped mountain we've been watching the whole way down, play a bit in the striped boulders, and collect a small souvenir rock.

Honeymoon Lake with the Striped Mountain in the background

striped boulders in front of Striped Mountain

After a bit more through the forest we hit the main descent. The day you hike out is never particularly great, but this last descent on an old mining road, switchbacking slowly down the mountain in the sun, is really not something to think more about. We do see some cool flowers and a great tree stump along the way. The last bit to the trailhead is through a nice mixed forest. We find that our car is still there, nothing inopportune has happened to it and it starts; yay! We change clothes, load everything in the car, and drive off.

looking down onto the end of the road and Pine Creek trailhead

We stop in Bishop for lunch at the same place we had dinner the night before we left (greg has been thinking about the pie that he didn't eat at that dinner), do some shopping and then drive to Mammoth Lakes where we check into our hotel and take long, much appreciated showers. At both lunch and dinner we end up eating way more than usual... what a huge surprise! :-)

Track:

A piece of the Sierra High Route: Black Bear Lake to Granite Park

We're in a campsite where morning sun is not going to happen, so we do breakfast and packing in the shade and are underway by 8:15 again. We start by heading to the foot of Black Bear Lake and then head up the slope to the sandy saddle overlooking White Bear Lake (also very attractive!). Here we turn off to the right and leave the "official" Sierra High Route to head up along a use trail to Dancing Bear Pass. There are lots, and lots, and lots of good views on the way up.

View down to White Bear Lake

From the long, narrow, flat Dancing Bear Pass we see Italy Pass for the first time. At first it seems much too close, so we're not completely convinced we've identified it correctly but once we reach the far side of the pass it's clear. From the end of the pass we have a great view of Jumble Lake, Mt. Julius Caesar, etc. We can also see the long talus slope that we'll need to traverse to get to Italy Pass. We do some route planning and then start walking. What a blast! A bit more than an hour of concentrated route finding and talus hopping, with spectacular views, we're in heaven. :-) This will be our last real "High Sierra" view for this trip, so we do plenty of short breaks for gawking.

Talus slope on the way to Italy Pass

At Italy Pass we take a short break and have a snack while sucking in the views. We convince ourselves that we do, in fact, have enough water to be able to climb up to Mt. Julius Caesar (there had been some question about this). So off we go. This is alternatingly fun talus scrambling and irritating sand/gravel slogging. There are "use trails" everywhere that don't particularly help. We quickly give up on those and pick our own route up to the saddle beside the main peak. Greg is having a blast with the boulder scrambling, so he makes the last bit way trickier than it needs to be. Andrea takes a more sensible route that can also be used to descend (Greg's route: not so much). At the peak we have views that beggar description. The mountain is both high and prominent, so nothing really gets in the way of the 360 degree views... this is why we do this kind of stuff (well... the scrambling is fun too). After loads of of gawking and photos and some snacks we bid the views adieu and make our way down.

View South from Mt. Julius Caesar

Back at the pass we have lunch and then put the packs back on and descend the other side of Italy Pass towards Granite Park. Now we're mostly on use trails, then real trails and it's almost too easy... we can do "walk and gawk" again. At the first lake we pump some water and then continue our descent. As we get lower, the vegetation changes, trees reappear, and it gets nice and green to contrast with the granite. Eventually we decide that we're both more than tired enough and it's time to stop. We pick a campsite likely to have morning sun, with great views and do all the normal end-of-the-day stuff.

Campsite in Granit Park

Dinner: chix noodle soup with chipotle and cumin. Freeze-dried chili (not too bad, maybe worth eating again). Something random with couscous, cheese, and garlic.

Track:

A piece of the Sierra High Route: La Salle Lake to Black Bear Lake

After a breakfast in shadows (we really didn't do a great job of evaluating sunrise/sunset for this site), we pump some water, pack up, and get underway by 8:15. We head up to La Salle Lake (another nice one) then follow a use trail up to the saddle at its inlet. Now we follow a mostly dry stream up through some very nice meadow until we spot the unnamed lake under Mt. Royce. Here we turn left and make our way up, up the granite slabs and sand and talus to Feather Pass. Here the views are just awesome so we take an extended break and lots of pictures. Feather Peak is theoretically possible from here, but it looks a bit hairy, so we skip it (a decision borne out when we get another view of the ridge and realize how long it is). The route down the other side of the pass takes some finding, but greg scouts ahead and picks out a way through the first steep bit that doesn't have anything nasty in it. We put on the packs and enjoy the fun, steep pass descent. Nothing particularly critical, just fun.

Reflection in La Salle Lake

Scouting out the route down from Feather Pass

At the bottom, next to the first of the Bear Lakes, we have an extended lunch break enjoying the views back to the Feather Pass and the crazy granite spires that are the continuation of the Feather Peak ridge. After lunch it's onward and downward until we reach the first of the bigger Bear Lakes (Bear Paw). These lakes are absolutely fantastic: they're deep enough to be really blue and have green around them as well as steep rocks. We walk by with lots of wows. At Ursa Lake we decide to continue up to Black Bear Lake despite Roper's description of it as austere. We figure that doing a bit of extra distance today will help with tomorrow and if the lake is really not nice, we can always come back down to Ursa.

Up, up we go until we top out near the outlet from Black Bear Lake. We follow this, past a potential campsite, to the lake itself. I'm not quite sure what Roper meant by "austere". True, there's not a lot of green around the lake, but it's still mighty attractive; the island in the middle is particularly cool. We search around for a while to find a good tent site and end up back at the first one we had noticed. We believe that we'll have long sun in the evening here; morning is unfortunately going to be shaded. We pitch the tent, pump water, wash, and then rest for a bit. Our pre-dinner stroll takes us to a couple of really nice view spots of the Bear Lakes (these are the most attractive set of lakes we see this trip; they are really something) and then a spot above Black Bear Lake where we can appreciate it properly (nice!). After some hanging out and picture taking we do our soup course and then some more gawking. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ridge (to the East of us), there are some big clouds building. This leads to scary thoughts. We haven't really seen much at all in the way of clouds on this trip: yesterday one teeny one, the two days before nothing, today a few puffy ones. These are... thought provoking... in a bad way.

Bear Lakes Basin with Feather Pass on the left

Preparing dinner in the evening sun

After the main dinner course and washing up we do another walk back to the point over Black Bear Lake to enjoy those views and the sunset (after which all the clouds vanish... yay!) then go back to the tent where we write (using the rock wall as a standing desk) and then head to bed.

Dinner: broccoli cheddar soup with chipotle. Mashed potatoes with salami, garlic, porcini.

Track:

A piece of the Sierra High Route: Puppet Lake Basin to tarn below La Salle Lake

Today we're efficient and are underway shortly after 8am. We head across the basin and then descend to Elba Lake, where we pump water while watching fish jump. From there it's down, down through a pine forest (back under the treeline) until we hit the bottom of French Canyon and pick up a real trail. No bears are encountered in the dark pine forest. We follow the trail for a while (so weird to be on a well-used trail again), dipping under 3000m (the lowest point of the trip), until we turn off on a faint trail that takes us up, up the other side of the canyon.

French Canyon with Merriam Peak

We're following decent trail through nice woods, next to a burbling stream. Nice! About halfway up we stop for a snack break and then continue up, up. The trail dumps us in a spectacular meadow surrounded by steep, dramatic mountains. We find a good place to sit and soak it all in for a while. We pump a bit of water, chance upon some teeny frogs, have lunch, and discuss just staying here since it's so nice. In the end we decide that it's too early to stop for the day, so we continue.

Meadow below Merriam Lake

Onward and upward, along another faint use trail beside the stream.  After a bit of climbing we hit the beautiful Merriam Lake. This one actually has sand beaches. Wow! What a lake. Another "should we stop early?" discussion, but we again decide to continue. The route along the shore of the lake has a clear use trail (yep, lots of people have Roper's book!) that leads us steeply up the wall of the cirque next to the inlet. Nice steep hike up, spotting a giant grasshopper along the way, and then we continue along the on-again, off-again faint use trail to the tarns that fill this basin.

Looking down onto Merriam Lake

We ditch the packs next to the last tarn (at ~ 3400m) and explore a bit to find the best tent spot. Upon retrieving our packs we have the third "stay or go?" discussion of the day. This time we opt for "stay". We pitch the tent, pump some water in a cool little alcove with a small waterfall (must be very cool when the water level isn't super low), and then set off on a walk. This takes us up the valley a bit more and then up to a ridge where we hoped to have spectacular views. Unfortunately, there's another ridge in front of this. Not to be thwarted by such minor things, we do the obvious and contour around to the second ridge. Here we get to enjoy a really great view down to our lovely meadow from earlier (not as lovely from above... the drama isn't there when you are atop one of the dramatic walls looking down), Merriam Lake, Pilot Knob, etc. Greg half-jokingly suggests going back to the first ridge and continuing along it to the top of Royce Peak. Of course it's too late in the day for this, so we don't do it. :-)  Instead we have a snack and then walk back via a different route (the landscape is very open, as was typical for most of the trip).

Underneath Royce Peak

Back at the tent we enjoy a nice skinny-dipping washing up at the little waterfall in the alcove (unfortunately no sun left in the alcove). Next comes a turbo dinner prep because we realize that we going to lose the sun early. Sure enough, at around 6 pm the sun vanishes behind a peak. It takes a frustratingly long time for some of the areas above us to lose the sun... too bad we're not up there. We'll learn from this for future site selection! We finish the day by tidying up, doing some logbook writing, enjoying the sunset on other peaks, and then retire to the tent rather early.

Dinner: Chix noodle soup with curry powder. Freeze dried beef stew (first time we've tried one of these things... it's ok, but not really great).

Track (the loop is the afternoon walk):

A piece of the Sierra High Route: Lower Desolation Lake to Puppet Lake Basin via Pilot Knob

After a good, though cold, night (it did get below freezing and there was frost in the morning), we do the usual morning things and get underway by 8:45 (late! we're out of practice!). Shortly after 8 another backpacker walks by about 100m away, this is the last person we'll see until day 6 (whoot!).

Lower Desolation Lake in the morning

From the lake we go cross-country, slowly climbing until we hit the crest above Mesa Lake that Roper mentions. We had planned to go through Puppet Pass, head to Puppet Lake, and then think about climbing Pilot Knob, but given the beautiful day and how appealing the mountain looks, decide to do Pilot Knob first. So we skip Mesa Lake, cross its basin, and climb up to the ridge above. From here we have a great view of Pilot Knob and its saddle as well as Pilot Lake below. We take a break to have a snack and plan the approach to the saddle.

break with view to Pilot Knob and its saddle to the right

After planning, we set out, first down, then traversing, through trees, over talus, up, up, up, until we hit footprints (!) that we follow the rest of the way up. We ditch our packs and take water, snacks, and the camera and then head along the ridge to go up Pilot Knob. This ends up being longer than anticipated, but it's great fun and good scrambling. We hit the ridge at a point well before the real peak (what the heck is "Vorgipfel" in English anyway?) and do a nice traverse to the true peak (~3700m). If we had been doing this in the Alps, we almost certainly would have had some gear with us and done some alpine belaying along the way, but we aren't there and don't have that stuff along anyway. ;-) At the real peak we enjoy the views and have a short break to enjoy the magnificent panorama (not too long, greg is thinking about the descent a bit too much). We end up taking a different, better, route down and are back at our packs reasonably quickly.

view from Pilot Knob to French canyon and Puppet Lake Basin

The next order of business is lunch, after which we descend the steep other side of the pass. There's a clear use trail for the first bit of this, so there's no route finding required and it's not particularly hairy.

descent towards Alsace Lake

After some descending and a bit of talus hopping (yay!) we hit Alsace Lake where we pump water before continuing around the lake. We're enjoying the lake too much and we end up leaving the basin too late, so we have to do a bit of backtracking before ascending to the ridge over Puppet Lake and the two nameless tarns in its basin. We ditch the packs and wander around for a bit to find a good campsite (we're too stubborn and stick up high near the trees for too long), it's about 15:30 by now.

After retrieving the packs, we set up camp (pitch tents, pump water, wash up, etc.) and then have a nice rest in the shade (oh is it nice to be in shade, we really aren't used to full days under intense sun!) before doing dinner. After dinner we take a good stroll around the basin to enjoy the sunset.

Dinner: Broccoli cheese soup. "Tagine" with salami, toasted "sambar" spice mix, olive oil, garlic, and couscous.

Track: