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My friend Courtney had told me about the Sierra High Route a couple years before. We'd been planning to do all or part of it at various times ever since. Finally this year (2003) we succeeded in actually getting on the trail. The term "trail", however, isn't really appropriate for the Sierra High Route. Steve Roper has put together a route traversing the crest of the Sierra Nevada from King's Canyon to Twin Lakes (on the northern edge of Yosemite). (I'm told there are also unofficial extensions southward, through the Triple Divide region.) Roper writes that about 60% of the route follows existing trails, a fair amount coinciding with the John Muir Trail, but the other 40% -- nearly half of it -- strikes off across trail-less alpine meadows and craggy passes. Roper guides you with delightfully vague directions, such as "upon reaching the northwest side of the lake, climb a small bluff and descend gentle slabs west to the next lake". I immediately fell in love with it: adventure and wild unspoiled lakes and cliffs beckoned to me from the pages of his guide book.
In the end Courtney and her husband, Robert, could only manage 16 days, so we planned to do a long section of it, going in at Taboose Pass to join with the SHR at Mather Pass, and exiting near Tully Hole via McGee Creek Pass. Fortunately I fall on the plentiful-time side of the Time-Money Paradox, so I kept indefinite plans of continuing on to Twin Lakes in the back of my mind: if all went well, I'd only miss a short stretch from King's Canyon to Frozen Lake Pass.
I joined up with Courtney in Boulder and spent a couple weeks hiking and
climbing around the area to get acclimatized. I did a couple hikes in the Flat
Irons and Indian Peaks Wilderness, and climbed Long's Peak (14K) in Rocky
Mountain National Park and Mount Powell (13K) in the Gore Range near Vail.
Late summer lingered in the Rockies, with the occasional sheltered meadows in
full bloom, watered by the last few fast-retreating snow banks.
Together, we finished all our preparations the week before: we planned to do
our 16 days together in two sections, resupplying via mule-train at Muriel Lake
in Humphrey's Basin (courtesy of Bishop Pack Outfitters). Even for a "mere" 16
day hike there are a remarkable number of boxes to pack, last-minute gear to
buy, bills to pay, etc. (I feel obliged to mention that all these sorts of
logistics have become much easier for me now that I'm semi-retired and spend
most of my time doing long-distance wilderness trips! Ah the simple life!)
Our friends Ken Walsh and Christine Chen also helped us tremendously by
agreeing to ferry us up and down the Owen's Valley to and from trailheads and
pack stations and such.
Taboose Pass is one of the more difficult ways of getting into the High Sierras. It rises from the desert floor of Owen's Valley at the end of a long rocky road (that kept threatening to puncture the underside of Ken's poor car) 6000 odd feet to the broad pass at 11400 feet. And it does this in less than 8 miles. This is not generally the recommended way to start a long backpacking trip with heavy packs! (Okay, our packs really weren't that heavy -- between 35 and 45 pounds -- but I'm a wimp; lightweight backpacking techniques have spoiled me so that anything over 20 or 25 pounds feels like a ton of bricks to me!) The foregoing complaints notwithstanding, we made an early pre-dawn start under a beautiful moon and found ourselves half-way up before the sun even hit us. We were standing proud on the summit of the pass just after midday.
We reached Mather Pass early the next day. Courtney was planning to climb
Split Mountain (14058 feet) that afternoon, but the first of many stormy
afternoons greeted us. Our best guess is that the hurricane pestering Baja
California was sending moist air in waves up into the Sierras. Over the
following 3 weeks it rained one out of every three days, and even when it
wasn't actually raining there were usually thunderstorms threatening. This is
more than a mere inconvenience. You see, the SHR goes to Herculean efforts to
stay above tree-line wherever possible. It only goes below 10000 feet twice on
the section we were doing. In the end that day, I did have just enough time to
scramble up the 3000 feet of talus to the summit and back before dark, but we
weren't always so "lucky".
The next morning dawned clear, and we enjoyed a glorious hike on the JMT
over Mather Pass down to the incomparably beautiful Palisade Lake. But
thunderstorms moved in quickly after lunch. We were already getting sprinkles
before we'd found our way up to Cirque Pass -- our first off-trail segment,
requiring some rather significant route-finding around a couple grim cliffy
sections. We took shelter at the lake below just as the first thunderstorms
hit us. I set up my tarp at a steep angle because the wind was so strong...
only to have the wind change direction. We all ended up soaked, but we had a
fantastic view down the hanging valley watching all the storms funnel past us.
We were treated to a particularly impressive lightning strike on the ridge
opposite us that started a huge rock-slide. It couldn't have been more than a
quarter mile away. We were all quite pleased to have chosen the correct side
of the lake to take shelter!
The section of the SHR from Palisade Lake to Dusy Basin is awesome. It
climbs and traverses through a huge region of sparkling lakes and polished
granite slabs. It probably sees a fair amount of travel (at least I assume so,
after having seen the use-trails that have spontaneously grown up in other more
fragile sections of the SHR), but there's hardly a sign humans have ever set
foot in this area. As far as I'm concerned, this is what the SHR is all about:
wandering through alpine lake basins between granite slabs and flowering
meadows hemmed in from the rest of the world by insane jagged ridges and peaks.
It's slow going as you encounter blind ravines and cliffs everywhere you turn,
but it more than makes up for inconvenience with beauty and adventure.
Personally, I'm all about slabs: I love scampering up and down boulders and
cliffs exploring all the little clefts and benches, pools and meadows,
waterfalls and cascades. Whenever we hit obstacles I went bounding off to
find the most challenging (ie. fun) line up it. (I suspect I make a terrible
hiking partner!)
We had a nice break in the weather from Knapsack Pass to Evolution Lake,
through Dusy Basin, LeConte Canyon, and over Muir Pass. When the weather is
good in the Sierras it is truly paradise on Earth. Where else do you get skies
that deep, colors that vivid, lakes that blue? I'm still debating whether I
like Palisade or Evolution Lake better; I'll probably go with the neat granite
slabs around Palisade in the end, but Evolution has everything you could want
in an alpine lake: fantastic meadows and rock, cozy bays and promontories,
jagged peaks and gentle valleys. It doesn't get much better than that.
Mount Darwin has acquired a bit of a reputation among Sierras peak-baggers. I generally prefer to gaze up at them comfortably from below, but there was something about the description of the route up Darwin that was particularly enticing. Perhaps it was the striking complexity of the face and paradoxical vagueness of the description; Roper says one "begins in the left-hand chutes and ends up eventually in the right-hand chutes". That's it. Excellent! It turns out that there are cairns at the bottom of the right-hand chute that guide you fairly confidently and safely up half the face, but I lost them soon thereafter. I kept heart and followed my nose, changing chutes a few more times, scrambling left and right on ledges to see what was around the corners, having a few scary moments when my routes around various obstacles stranded me in the middle of minor cliffs, but in the end I found myself at the foot of a handy little slab topping out on the summit plateau.
The other reason Mount Darwin beckoned to me was the obscene little
summit pinnacle. You see, the top-most point on Darwin isn't actually on the
plateau -- it's on this evil little detached pile of rocks. It only requires
a couple of moves; the problem is that you've got huge exposure.
Especially the last move. Admittedly it's easy, with a wide selection of
sharply edged horizontal cracks, but for god's sake! And past climbers had the
nerve to put the summit register on the pinnacle -- oh no! those of you who
succeed in navigating up 1000 odd feet of tricky avalanche chutes to the 13800
foot summit haven't really climbed the peak -- you've got to hang your
ass out over the abyss to stand atop this silly pile of granite slabs, too.
(Of course, having mustered the courage to do so myself, I'm all in favor of
forcing everyone else to do it now, too!)
The next major obstacle on the SHR after Evolution Lake is the Glacier Divide. Roper officially sends the route over Snow Tongue Pass, but suggests Alpine Col and the Keyhole as easier alternatives. Courtney, Robert and I split up here: they decided to give Alpine a go, I wanted to take a detour out to the end of the divide overlooking the confluence of French and Evolution Creeks, returning via Snow Tongue to meet back up with them at our resupply point at Muriel Lake. It's not really clear who "won": both passes sucked pretty much equally as far as I can tell!
Snow Tongue is reasonably pleasant on the south face, but the prospect
looking north is at least as bleak as Roper suggests. Following an extremely
evil scree slope at the critical angle that ends in the promised snow tongue,
your real travails have only just begun: ahead are several miles of
Volkswagen-sized jumbled talus that... just... never... ends... Ugh.
However, according to Courtney, those expecting Alpine Col to be a walk in the park are in store for an unpleasant surprise. In addition to several miles of Volkswagen-sized talus, you also have to navigate down the initial talus-covered cliff immediately north of the pass. Perhaps had she known to stay high and traverse right (I think it was right, maybe it was left?) they might have had a better time. As it was they were forced to climb back up to the pass a couple times, each attempted descent ending in an unclimbable band of cliffs! (They at least had the slightly offsetting bonus of staying the night at the beautiful Goethe Lake, colored vivid bright blue from glacial melt-water.)
Thunderstorms moved in again at Muriel Lake. Robert is an atmospheric
scientist, and thus knew way too much about thunderstorms for his own peace of
mind (I remain blissfully ignorant, thankfully). We decided together that we'd
hike out Piute Pass that afternoon (August 26th). Courtney and Robert would
head off to Yosemite (which Robert had never seen) for a week of day-hiking,
and I would resupply in Bishop and continue on alone. I'm pretty sure it
crushed Courtney to have to leave after only 8 days, but Robert, who seems not
to thrive so well on day after day of mere beautiful scenery ("don't you get
bored?"), seemed pretty excited by this change in plans.
The only hitch in the whole plan (quite literally, if you'll forgive the pun) was retrieving Courtney's car from the McGee Creek trailhead. We arrived at the North Lake trailhead at dark, with rain pouring down, so we waited till morning to do anything (although it continued to rain most of the next day, too). This trailhead has no outgoing traffic on weekday mornings. I succeeded in walking almost all the way to Cardinal Valley Resort before I got my first ride -- for a whopping 100 yards! The second truck I saw also gave me a ride, if only for a few miles, which gave me a false sense of hope. The next dozen cars were all shiny new SUVs, probably all from Los Angeles, and none gave me a ride. Sigh, I hate to make broad generalizations, but there was an exact correlation between country-folk giving me rides and city-folk not. Patience paid off in the end, and to my astonishment a local guy working part-time for the forest service ended up giving me a ride all the way from the Lake Sabrina turnoff to the McGee Creek trailhead. It's too bad hitching has such a bad reputation these days; this ride was a terrifically enjoyable experience (as hitching almost always is, in my limited experience).
I need to thank Courtney and Robert (I already have, but it doesn't hurt to
do it again) for putting up with me for as long as they did and even helping
me throw together hasty plans for the remainder of my trip that day while we
stayed in Bishop. Packed chock full of food, I boxed up the rest of my "city
gear", mailed it ahead to Mammoth Lakes, and was conveniently chauffeured back
up to the North Lake trailhead the following morning. The thunderstorms and
rain had spent themselves the previous day while we were lounging around
comfortably in town, so I enjoyed a very pleasant re-entry into the High
Sierras. (It didn't hurt that, if Taboose Pass is one of the most difficult,
then Piute Pass has got to be one of the easiest.)
I enjoyed hiking with Robert and Courtney tremendously: they were extremely understanding of my need to wander off the trail, stop frequently to identify flowers, and god knows what else. But in the end, I really do prefer to experience the wilderness alone. Only when I'm alone can I begin to empty my mind of thoughts and really notice all the beautiful things going on around me. Mother Nature only speaks to me when I'm alone. (Or is that me talking to myself?)
The SHR's route for the next several days is very pleasant, taking you
through Humphrey's Basin, the Bear Lakes region, and Second Recess. These are
gentle yet wild alpine wildernesses that seem not to get very much traffic.
The cascades draining the Royce Lakes are very impressive. I tried very
hard to find a way to scramble up beside them, but the best I could manage was
to work my way in from the side and meet the creek in one place about mid-way
up. The conventional route up the obvious talus chute far to the right is easy
but rather unexciting.
I fell in love with the Bear Lakes. The region is relatively gentle but
extremely complex. For some reason the glaciers appear to have answered the
call of a different source of gravity than the present creeks do. The result
is a convoluted network of ice-gouged ravines and canyons running off in
improbable directions, interconnecting lakes and creeks in a variety of
different drainages. As far as you can see all is bare polished granite:
benches and mounds and ridges and cliffs and cascades.
I highly recommend the lengthy detour to Seven Gables. The approach is
half the fun. The route Roper suggests, descending the creek from Ursa Lake is
an adventure, but by no means the most efficient. I did a round-trip, crossing
over to Vee Lake immediately, then returning up Roper's creek. I spent most of
the return trip boulder-hopping in the creek itself -- ostensibly looking for
onions to add to my dinner, but more likely just because I could -- it was such
a neat little narrow winding rocky gorge. The climb up Seven Gables itself is
rather uninspired (this is not a bad thing!) being merely a long 3000 foot slog
up slabs, talus, and scree, with perhaps a class 3 move or two at the very top.
But the view is every last bit as good as Roper suggests. I was blessed with
particularly good visibility, so I could easily see Whitney, Banner and Ritter,
the White Mountains, and so many more mountains than I could even begin to
identify.
After Lake Italy and the gorgeous Second Recess the SHR descends for the
second time below 10000 feet. There is still one more rugged alpine section
past Laurel Lake and Izaak Walton, but the SHR joins the JMT soon thereafter
in Tully Hole. The trail definitely changes character at this critical point.
It leaves the huge expanses of granite lake basins behind and enters vast
lodgepole forests and volcanic landscapes on its way to Red's Meadow.
The last bit of adventure on this leg of the trip for me came at the very
end. I crossed over to Valentine Lake and thence down to the sprawling town of
Mammoth Lakes. A brief perusal of my topo maps of the area made it very clear
that there really isn't any easy way from the SHR into the Valentine Lake
drainage. I studied it very closely, identified a spot that looked feasible,
and headed for it, leaving the trail at Duck Pass. The problem with this sort
of thing is that, not only can't you see the far side of the pass, of course,
but even once you reach the pass and gaze down, you aren't necessarily any
better off. In this case there was a 100 foot sheer cliff on the other side.
It turns out you can traverse to the right to a navigable talus slope that
leads to the broad plateau below, but according to the map, the steep
part is the drop off the plateau, which was cliff on almost all sides. Maybe.
As it so happens, I was lucky: there was a very long, but relatively safe
unbroken scree slope through a broad avalanche chute that ran all the way down
to the moraines above Valentine Lake below. When I finally arrived at the
bottom, the spectacular little intimate Valentine Lake made it worth all the
effort.
The day I left after resupplying in Mammoth, I retraced my steps back past Valentine Lake to Duck Pass. Thunderstorms started forming early. I knew better, but there really was no alternative to climbing the pass that morning: there were no other trails available to get me back to the SHR from Valentine Lake. I hoped that I would make it over the pass before lightning began. As it happened the storms had been piling up hidden behind the sharp ridge line and split the sky open right as I reached the top. It scared the hell out of me! I was torn between running down the mountain as fast as I could and being careful not to break an ankle on the loose talus with a heavy pack on. I waited out the first few waves of storm in some low trees in a little ravine at tree-line, but no end was in sight, so I eventually had to give up and skip the section of the SHR along the Mammoth Crest. I retraced my steps from a few days earlier and took the JMT toward Red's Meadow. Little did I know at the time, but that day was the last it rained on me for the rest of the trip. It might have been the most miserable as well, as it poured cats and dogs non-stop all day long; I wasn't walking on a trail so much as a creek. But even so I managed to find a dry spot under a big tangle of lodgepole pines near the trail that evening. The next day the clouds reluctantly burned off; by sunset only a few tatters still clung to the distant peaks.
I do not highly recommend the route I took the next two days. I'd gotten a
little too excited by how easy and enjoyable off-trail travel had been on the
SHR. It looked like it would be a piece of cake to cross over to the Ritter
Range through the inviting forests below. I left the trail several miles from
the Red Cones. It was quite pleasant open forest and pumice meadow at first,
but it became very unpleasant in the valley below: I had to cross several
little streams and bogs through heinous willow thickets, and just when I
figured I'd been through the worst, I discovered that the "meadows" in the wake
of the big fires of a few years earlier were a nightmare of huge weeds and
thistles and tangled fallen snags. I was partially rewarded for the effort by
stopping fortuitously on top of a little granite dome overlooking Rainbow Falls
with a stupendous view of the whole valley. The Ritter Range, Mammoth Crest,
and Silver Divide were just emerging from the last bits of golden cloud as the
sun set. My route up King Creek was certainly much different than the previous
day's weed- and willow-thrashing, but still hardly a walk in the park. I
followed the winding creek up wonderful polished granite slabs past hundreds
of gentle cascades and crystal pools, through narrow basalt postpile gorges
and dense hemlock forests.
I rejoined the SHR at Beck's Cabin. The SHR through this section, all the
way to 1000 Island Lake is apparently very popular. (And rightfully so. I
think Minaret Lake, for example, is one of the most beautiful on the entire
route.) You generally have a wide selection of use-trails, no matter which
route you wish to follow. I tried my best to help spread hikers' impact by
choosing routes no one else had taken, but sometimes that proved difficult: no
matter which gully or meadow I aimed for, sure enough there was a faint trail
there, too. Rock-hopping was really the only way, but my feet got mighty tired
of that so I eventually just gave up.
I had a little accident on the talus descending Nancy Pass. I suppose it
was only a matter of time before I paid the price for wearing my little
moccasins without any ankle protection whatsoever. The 5.10 stealth rubber I
use for soles work spectacularly well for scrambling around slabs and talus and
such. But this time I caught the corner of a rock in passing. I didn't really
even feel it; I noticed it when I looked down and saw the blood. The rock had
caught the skin on top of my ankle and sliced it open right down to the muscle.
(Don't ask why, but I've had the dubious pleasure of seeing the shiny silver
fascia around various of my muscles several times before, so I was well aware
of exactly how deep it was.) Fortunately it was a very clean cut and only
about an inch long. Of course, I don't carry a first aid kit. Stupid, you
say? Well, I'd worked out what I'd do in theory long ago, and here was the
perfect test. I cut off a bit of my towel, soaked it in iodine and placed it
over the cut, covered that with duct tape, and wrapped the whole ankle with one
of those plastic bags you find in the veggie department in supermarkets. I
still had to walk funny for a few days, because any motion of the ankle tended
to re-open the cut. The next morning I repeated the whole thing. It looked
perfectly clean and pink and healthy. I left it open at lunch a little later,
and it scabbed over quickly, after which I left the "bandage" off. I should
point out that it never really healed because I kept snagging it on stuff
repeatedly, although there was a marked improvement when I bought some
superglue in Yosemite a week or so later.
The next section of the SHR is absolutely phenomenal. Lake Catherine is a
sparkling jewel right at the foot of Banner Peak. You follow its outlet
through a charming winding little ravine and emerge on the rim of the world,
overlooking a rock-scrambler's paradise at the headwaters of the North Fork of
the San Joachim River. Endless miles of polished slabs of the most fantastic
colors and patterns of granite, tumbling falls and cascades, and flower-filled
meadows are everywhere. Ah, yes, this is proper wilderness! The
nearest trailheads are days away in every direction; looking down the San
Joachim, everything you can see is pristine and rugged, and chances are high
that there's not a single person in any of it!
In my case that was nearly true, even in early September, generally considered high season in the Sierras. But I did run into pair of thru-hikers just below the pass. I think they spent more time bickering with each other than actually hiking, but they nevertheless had managed to find the time between arguments to hike the full length of the SHR from King's Canyon. I imagine they probably reached Twin Lakes a little over a week after I met them. When I looked earlier in the year I'd found no official reports of end-to-end hikers on the SHR before, so I was quite pleased to discover first-hand that there are in fact people who do it.
I finally left the SHR at the mouth of Bench Canyon. I had originally planned to go on to Tuolumne, but my maps showed too many fascinating places to visit along the branch of the San Joachim River below and the Clark Range away to the west. I'd never been anywhere in the Ansel Adams Wilderness or the backcountry of Yosemite, so I couldn't resist.
As I descended from Bench Canyon I soon found the canyon choked with scrub
oak, sage, manzanita, willow, etc. I was fascinated with the bizarre topology
of the canyon here, but I quickly lost any interest in continuing off-trail.
I headed back up on a trail at Hemlock Crossing. As soon as I was free of
chaparral I left the trail again, and traversed over to the beautiful Joe
Crane Lake through deep hemlock and lodgepole forests.
The topology of the Clark Range between Post Peak and Red Peak suggested a very convenient off-trail route that parallels the main crest at and above tree line, linking a long string of gorgeous alpine lakes and meadows. After that I crossed the unchallenging talus-covered pass to the right of Red Peak and began my descent toward Yosemite Valley, stopping by the charming, remote, forested little Grayling Lake.
In all the time since leaving the two guys on the SHR near Lake Catherine -- three days -- I hadn't seen a soul. In fact, I only saw a single set of tracks even... well, people tracks, that is, I saw plenty of bear tracks! As I approached the Valley I felt oppressed by all the people. Even just the smell of people was overwhelming. I was really upset that I'd done the wrong thing in coming down. But it's hard to stay depressed in Yosemite Valley! I lazed around reading in my favorite meadow near Camp 4 (for some reason I find that I always have this meadow completely to myself), and that night the crickets and katydids sang me to sleep. By morning I felt like a new man.
I have a weak spot for Yosemite Valley. I stayed in the Valley for several
days doing short trips. I'd already done all the trails (most at least, I
still haven't done the "4 mile trail" to Glacier Point for some reason), so I
tried a few things I've always wanted to do. I scrambled up El Capitan Gully
and followed the valley rim mostly off trail to Yosemite Falls Trail and back
to the valley, and later I went up Tenaya Canyon to see how far I could get.
El Capitan Gully is actually really easy to find, but I misread the lay of
the land completely and decided to start at the base of El Capitan and
work my way up left at the foot of the cliff. It turns out you want to
continue west till you reach a little talus ditch that leads right up the
gully. I ended up half way up this thing called K-P Pinnacle (having done some
mighty scary boulder moves on the way) before I finally got a good view down
into the gully proper, but by then I was completely screwed and had to back off
for the day (there was no way down the sheer cliffs on the other side of K-P
into the gully, and I was totally out of water because it was a blistering hot
day). Even going up the correct route the next day wasn't easy -- there are
some really scary 4th class slabs (it's the darned scrub oaks and punky crumbly
moss that make it terrifying, not the slabs themselves per se) and a neat 2-3
foot wide slot canyon at the top that required some really fun stemming
maneuvers and pack-hauling to get past a few chockstones (one of which hid a
pool above it with two dead ducks in it -- yecch!!)
Tenaya Canyon was really exciting. I wasn't expecting to make it more than
a mile, so I just wandered up one Saturday afternoon to get away from the
crowds, figuring I could camp illegally somewhere and no one would be the
wiser. It turns out it's pretty non-technical to boulder-hop up quite a way.
There's a fantastic waterfall about a quarter mile past where the valley loop
trail doubles back -- doubly exciting because the water level was so low this
time of year that I could scramble around in the potholes and stuff, imagining
the power of the river in full spring flood. I stopped for the night in a
broad boulder field just shy of where the river emerges from a narrow canyon,
figuring I'd gone as far as I could. But the next morning I discovered that it
really wasn't very difficult to boulder around all the small waterfalls in this
canyon (the geology of the canyon conspired to provide extremely convenient
ledges on the left side of the canyon most of the way). In fact I really don't
think I had to do anything technical in this stretch. While the second
gorge did prove to be completely impassible, I was able to scramble up to the
right around the whole mess. There was a 10' section of very easy 4th/5th
class face climbing (but I felt comfortable or I would've backed down in a
second!), and the bushwhacking through the dense chaparral once I got above the
gorge was breathtakingly frustrating. The real clincher, though, was the
death-slab past the chaparral. It was super-polished (even the 5.10 climbing
rubber on my moccasins wouldn't bite in places), and it looked like I would
skitter right off the cliff into the gorge if I slipped. I probably should
have backed off immediately, but I had very strong incentive not to
repeat the chaparral I'd just crossed (ugh!). So I agreed with myself I'd go
really slowly and carefully and I wouldn't make a single move I wasn't 100%
confident of. In the end (it seemed like an eternity) I was able to find a
continuous path following cracks and roughened ledges and such all the way back
down to the creek. Imagine my surprise at this point when I turn the corner
and find a whole posse of climbers headed down the canyon! The leader was
really interested in my route because he'd never heard of anyone going
up Tenaya Canyon. (Of course, I'd never heard of anyone doing it in any
direction! It goes to show that it's much easier to do something if no one
tells you it's impossible!) At the time I was terrified still, because I
figured the hardest part -- Pywiack Cascade -- was coming up and was going to
stop me cold, but these guys gave me directions up the slabs to the right of
the Cascades and insisted I'd made it through the worst. (The directions were
classic: "Go up the canyon till you see the big pine tree on the right. Head
for that, then head for the pile of rocks on top of the ridge." Hmmm. The
remarkable thing was that there really was this huge pine tree out in
the middle of a big chaparral forest that you couldn't mistake for anything
else! Too bad he didn't mention the bee's nest, though...)
Going down Tenaya would probably be a blast. The guys I met claimed
that you only had to rappel three times, and you don't need a wetsuit or
anything. I can't begin to describe how impressive the canyon is from deep
inside, what with Clouds Rest, Quarter, Half, North and Basket Domes, and Mount
Watkins all towering above you in sheer sweeping flawless granite cliffs. Wow.
After "resting" thus in Yosemite Valley for a week, I resupplied for another
week in the high country. I hitched up to Tuolumne Meadows and rejoined the
SHR near there. I missed the section -- almost all on trails -- from Bench
Canyon to Tuolumne, but at least I would finish the final section.
It's not the finest scenery on the route, but it does have the advantage of crossing some rather poorly-known areas, such as the Hall Natural Area. This is a rugged desolate alpine expanse of small glaciers and lakes. You are treated to fantastic views eastward into the Nevada desert the whole way.
The thing that really sticks in my memory about this final section of the
SHR is the passes. Both Sky Pilot Col and Shepherd Pass prove to be rather
unpleasant experiences in my opinion. The endless nasty unstable talus on
the far side of the former was particularly distasteful. Granted, it didn't
help that I got off route on both: I followed a use-trail to the pass that
leads in McCabe Lake first, requiring an ugly traverse to get to the correct
one; and while descending Shepherd I wound up full in the middle of the class
4 slabs that Roper warns readers of (for this section all I had was the map,
not the descriptions).
The highlight of the section, indeed a spectacular finish for a long SHR trek, is a climb of the Matterhorn. It's not particularly tall, at 12264 feet, but it towers over everything in the vicinity, giving you a tremendous view not to be forgotten.
I descended from Matterhorn to Burro Pass, then went on down Piute Creek to
Benson Lake. The upper parts of Piute are fantastic gentle sub-alpine meadow;
you hardly even notice there isn't a trail. It becomes more and more
brush-choked as you go, though, and becomes really quite miserable by the end.
From Benson I angled across another trail-less section from Roger's Lake to Cold Mountain. This is a beautiful area, and travel really isn't that difficult. I went out to Wildcat Point and descended some nasty slabs near there down to the trail in Tuolumne Canyon near Glen Aulin.
The trail down the Tuolumne Canyon is, of course, tremendous. Even that
late in the season the cascades are amazing, and the old-growth forests down
there are simply awesome. I highly recommend camping atop the roche moutonee
next to the trail in Pate Valley (sadly scarred by recent fires, although you
can't tell from your vantage point on top of the little mound of rock.) It has
a peerless view of the whole valley and starry sky, and you can fall asleep
awash in the sounds of the night insects below.
I do NOT, however, recommend the "shortcut" I took up the side of Rancheria
Mountain. The entire slope is packed with small hidden cliffs and the charred
remains of a dense chaparral forest. And it doesn't ease up appreciably at the
top until you finally reach the trail some mile or two in from the edge. My
poor lightweight backpack was shredded by this ordeal -- its 2.2 oz nylon was
not designed for that sort of abuse.
Even the trail on top was barely a trail anymore. The nasty thorny ceanothus grows up so quickly in the wake of big forest fires that trail maintenance crews just can't keep up. However the trail improved as it descended into Hetch Hetchy. The stretch from Rancheria Falls to the dam is superb, one of the finest trails in Yosemite. It follows a fortuitous bench left by the last glacier presumably, that runs across the face of Hetch Hetchy Dome. You have fantastic views of the reservoir and cliffs almost the whole way, with surprisingly little elevation change.
The highlight of my entire 5 week stay in the Sierras came the following day
-- my last day of hiking, I was luckier than I thought! All the trails from
Hetch Hetchy south and east toward Yosemite Valley are severely damaged by
fires it seems. I was lured in because the first mile or two to Cottonwood
Meadows weren't too bad. And I was really excited because I found a
big granite slab in the forest with dozens of holes from Indians grinding
acorns, and later found a ton of absolutely perfect mountain lion tracks -- at
least I thought they were; they were a bit small, being a "mere" 3 inches wide.
(To give you an idea how few people hike in this area, I could see where the
lion had walked back and forth what must have been dozens of times -- the trail
was just covered with his tracks and no other creature, man or
otherwise, had been by in days.) So I was already pretty excited. (Cottonwood
Meadows, by the way, is a gorgeous pleasant gentle place -- highly recommended
if you're into that sort of thing -- not really the rocky craggy scene you
normally expect of Yosemite.)
The next trail to Aspen Valley was a different story. The sign was clear
enough -- they're all stamped out of sheet metal so they can survive fires --
however the slope the sign was in showed not the slightest hint of a trail. I
thought I was up for a bit of adventure, so I struck out anyway, looking for
axe-marks and sawn log sections from old pre-fire blow-downs and any other
tell-tale traces of trail I might find. It really wasn't as difficult as it
looked: the ceanothus and thistles had completely taken over, but they only
grew in from the sides of the trail, and the new growth wasn't very stiff yet,
so it would grudgingly part before you if you managed to mostly stay on the old
trail.
At one point the trail ran into a creek. It wasn't clear whether it crossed
into the meadow on the other side or not, so I stood around looking on both
sides for any clues that might suggest where the trail was supposed to go. I
eventually just took a compass reading and struck out across the creek and
aimed for the far side of the meadow. However I hadn't gone more than a few
steps after crossing the creek when I heard an odd sound and turned to look.
There, not 5 feet from me, was a huge tan shape melting into the underbrush by
the creek. Just at the same moment as I caught my breath, thinking "mountain
lion!", two more lions leapt off in two other directions!! I swear I
must have stepped on their tails! They must've been watching me as I looked
around for the trail on the other side of the creek for 10 minutes! It didn't
even occur to me to be scared at first. The right-most one stopped some 20
feet away to glare at me for a while, but (of course) didn't give me time to
get my camera. (Sure, you say, likely story! :) Well, I've been praying to
get the chance to see a lion for years and years, so you can imagine I was on
cloud nine for the next few hours -- I finally get to see a lion, and I don't
just get to see one... I end up stumbling right into the middle of a den of
three at the same time!! (This was only a mile or two away from the tracks
from earlier that morning, so I assume this explains why they were a bit small:
presumably it was a mother and two nearly-grown cubs.) Amazing creatures.
They didn't make a sound as they bounded off through the dense brush (I'd have
heard a deer for quite a while after scaring it off) -- they just sort of
melted into the woods. They're there one second, then they're not.
The trail improved dramatically in Aspen Valley, as a trail crew had just cleared it all the way through to the Tioga Pass Road. The following morning I hitched into the Valley, and caught the bus out the next day.
I hoped you enjoyed reading some of this!