Backpacking trip on the High Sierra Trail. Jan heads down to California for a week of backpacking with his brother Chris on the High Sierra Trail. The 72 mile trail goes across much of Sequoia National Park, and includes a challenging summit of Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the continental United States. Jan and Chris will be following a “strenuous” itinerary suggested by the National Park Service.
From San Francisco Airport, Jan makes his way down to the tiny little San Carlos airport, where he meets Chris. They say goodbye to Chris’ girlfriend, Julie, then take a small plane to Visalia, CA, the closest major town to Sequoia National Park.
High Sierra Trail, Day 1. Jan has a terrible night’s sleep, but today’s the day to start hiking! Jan and Chris take a shuttle to Sequoia National Park and pick up their backpacking permit. Before setting out, they take another shuttle to look at a famous grove of tall sequoia trees that includes “General Sherman”, a huge sequoia.
The brothers set out from the lesser-used Alta Trailhead; it was easier to get a permit that way. A helpful ranger suggested the trailhead as “The Secret Squirrel Entrance” to the High Sierra Trail. We hike for a bit, and at several points chat with a Swiss family. They’re intrigued by long-distance hiking, particularly along the PCT. The dad points out that the distance we’ll be hiking is something like ⅓ the width of Switzerland. We bid goodbye to them at a spot called Panther Gap. We make our way down a ridge, and about six miles from the Secret Squirrel trailhead, meet up with the High Sierra Trail proper.
In the mid-afternoon, we hear some noises in the bushes above the trail. It’s our first bear sighting. [The park staff leads hikers to believe that the campgrounds are plagued by bears, but this one bear will later prove to be only one we’ll see in our week of hiking.]
At a place called Buck Creek, we pass a hiker threesome from D.C., two women and a man, whom we’ll later meet many more times. From the creek, it’s a bit of a slog up a hill to reach Bearpaw Meadow, our first campground on the trail. The name “meadow” turns out to be something of a misnomer — the real meadow is somewhere further ahead. In fact, we’re camping in hillside forest. At the campground, we see an older couple whom we’ll also meet many more times along the trail. Since many people follow the Park Service’s suggested itinerary, it’s common to keep running into the same groups over and over.
High Sierra Trail, Day 2. While eating breakfast at Bearpaw Meadow, we see a doe and two fawns circling the campground looking for food. (We’ll see deer at nearly every campground we stay at. Chris will eventually conclude that one way to know you’re getting close to a campground is when you see deer.)
Today’s hiking starts out with a beautiful, gentle downhill descent for 2 miles — followed by miles of grueling uphill climb. The downhill portion ends at a bridge very high above Lone Pine creek. The trail guide helpfully informs us that there’s “No water access at this point”. No kidding! The bridge must be well over 100 ft. above the creek!
There are many lizards sunning themselves on or by the trail. This one was an iridescent turquoise.
From the bridge, we begin the long climb towards the Kaweah Gap. The first portion of the climb ends at a pretty lake called Hamilton Lake, where we take a swim to cool off. We eat lunch while we dry off.
From Hamilton Lake, the climb only gets steeper and dustier. As the trail goes up, it begins to cling to an increasingly steep hillside. Jan dislikes hiking along steep drop-offs, and this dislike is sorely tested in one portion where the trail has been literally blasted out of a steep cliffside. This is followed by more climbing, and then by more climbing. We’re getting pretty tired.
On the plus side, we get to see some cute pikas (small alpine rodents). There are also plenty of marmots and lizards.
We stop to rest at a small lake, then gather energy for more climbing to Precipice Lake. At this point, we’re above the treeline, and the landscape is stark.
More climbing finally brings us to Kaweah Gap, a mile-long stretch of undulating trail that passes many small alpine tarns. At long last, we’re through the Gap, and enter a long valley called Big Arroyo. We’re not done for the day, though — we still have some 3.5 miles to hike down to get to our campsite.
High Sierra Trail, Day 3. A view of the Big Arroyo Creek which our campsite overlooks.
Jan and Chris spend the morning climbing up the eastern side of the Big Arroyo valley. Jan’s a little sick, so this takes a while. We finally reach the top of the ridge, and begin a long, gentle climb down.
This tree is half-dead, half-alive: there’s a strip of still-living bark that coils around the tree. In the distance, smoke rises from a small forest fire that a ranger says has burning for the past week.
We stop for lunch at a fork in trail. The sign’s either been moved, or wasn’t set up right, because it points the wrong way. We end up going past Moraine Lake, a slightly longer route than we’d planned. We’d been thinking of camping at the lake, but it’s not a particularly pretty lake, and an early stop here would leave us with too much mileage to make up tomorrow.
We hike and hike, and eventually enter a long series of steep switchbacks into Kern Canyon. We pass by the nice D.C. threesome again. The switchbacks go on and on as the afternoon wanes. Around 6:00 pm, we arrive at the canyon floor and Upper Funston Meadow, our campground for the evening. Shortly after we’ve set up camp, the D.C. contingent arrives. Chris builds a fire, and we invite the D.C. threesome to join our fire. They introduce themselves as Amy, Molly, and Sam.
High Sierra Trail, Day 4. Today’s hike is the best of the week: nearly all of it goes up the forested floor of Kern Canyon. This is an extremely gentle rise of 1,000 feet or so over nearly 10 miles, much of it in view of the picturesque Kern River.
As a bonus, there’s a nice natural hot spring called Kern Hot Spring. By the time we get there, Amy, Molly, and Sam are just packing up. We soak for a while in the small spring to clean off the dust and dirt and to feel really warm for the first time in a few days.
In the afternoon, we get some unexpected excitement: a rattlesnake crawls across the trail. It’s not rattling, and just wants to get away, but it’s still a surprise. For the next hour, every branch by the trailside looks like a snake.
We reach our destination for the day, Junction Meadow, but there’s still plenty of light left, and we’d like to get a jump on tomorrow’s ascent out of Kern Canyon. We press on for an additional mile or so and gain some altitude. We find a great campsite near an old shepherd’s cabin. The site is right above the Kern River, so after setting up camp, we cool off in the water. Jan’s content to just wash off, while Chris wades out into the freezing cold river.
In the evening, the friendly hiking couple we’ve now seen a few times comes into camp. They introduce themselves as Dave and Ginny from Pittsburgh. Chris makes another fire, and Dave and Ginny come over to sit by it while we all eat dinner. Our dinner tonight — a Thai curry — is the best one we’re going to eat this week. We’re eating it tonight because it includes a packet of vacuum-sealed chicken, which is delicious, but also heavy. We want to get rid of as much heavy food as we can, because we’re going to spend the next two days climbing up towards the summit of Mt. Whitney.
High Sierra Trail, Day 5. From the Kern River, we begin the first part of the long climb up the Wallace Creek ravine. By mid-morning, we’ve reached the trail’s junction with the Pacific Crest Trail and John Muir Trail. After more climbing, we stop for lunch at an overlook.
We watch a number of mule trains go by. We’ve seen several in the past few days, but these are traveling closely together. Their drivers say they’re doing science work, carting dirt samples out for ecological studies. Later on, a mule train goes by in the other direction. This one is led by a young guy dressed like the Marlboro Man. Our calls of “Hi there! How’s it going?” are met with a laconic, “Hey”.
One question we’ve struggled with all week is where to camp on our last night. We’ve been told that, on the east side of Mt. Whitney (where we’ll go tomorrow), all campers must have bear-proof food canisters. Those things are heavy, so we don’t have one. Instead, we have much lighter bear-proof food bags, and have either been hanging those way up in trees, or storing them in bear-proof food lockers at campsites that have those. Since we don’t have a bear canister, though, we’re expected to completely finish our trip tomorrow. That would make for a crazy long day of hiking, and we’d much rather camp somewhere below Mt. Whitney if we can get a bear canister somehow.
We make a detour to the Crabtree Meadow ranger station to see if the ranger stationed there can rent us a canister. He’s not around, so we continue on and hope something will work out.
Not far after that, we pass a mother and daughter hiking the trail. We later learn their names are Karen and Lauren, and the two are finishing up a much longer hike than ours, the 200+ mile John Muir Trail. We’ll run into Karen and Lauren several more times in the next two days.
We eventually reach our destination for today: Guitar Lake. It’s above the treeline, and surrounded by stark, rocky, peaks, so it looks somewhat desolate.
The Guitar Lake area is windy and quite cold. Jan ends up having to wear literally every article of clothing he’s brought to stay warm — including wearing a spare pair of socks on his hands as gloves. During dinner, it begins to hail. Thankfully, however, the wind abates, and the night isn’t too bad.
High Sierra Trail, Day 6. We wake up at 5:00 am so we can get an early start on our summit of Mt. Whitney. It’s still dark out, and we can see tiny white lights as people are stirring in their sites around Guitar Lake. We can spot a row of lights moving along the scree slope above the lake: hikers who got an earlier start than we did. Chris spots one light far up on the Whitney ridge.
We have a quick, cold breakfast, and break camp as early as we can. We’re hiking by 6:00. It’s a very long, slow climb. It actually doesn’t seem quite as bad as the earlier ascent to the Kaweah Gap, but now we’re much higher — above 11,000 feet — so the air is thinner, and makes for slower going.
We eventually reach a key trail junction with the trail to the summit and the trail down the east side of the mountain. Since we’ll pass this point on the way back down, we do the standard thing and drop most of our gear in a pile. We only take water, lunch, and a few other key items with us for the rest of the ascent.
The trail continuing along the Whitney ridge toward the summit is rocky. While it’s level in places, it mostly goes up and up.
After four hours of hiking, we finally reach the summit of Mt. Whitney at 10:00 am. At 14,505 feet, it’s the highest point in the continental United States. There are a lot of people at the top: backpackers like us who have come from the High Sierra or John Muir Trails, as well as hikers who have come up the eastern approach from Whitney Portal. We’re very relieved to have finally made it, and spend a leisurely hour eating lunch and taking pictures. We run into both the D.C. hikers again, as well as hikers Dave and Ginny. It’s nice to see everybody at the top.
The way back down Mt. Whitney is easier, naturally, but still really, really long. After retrieving our gear at the trail junction, we descend a series of 99 steep switchbacks. We pass some very tired-looking people slogging their way upward. Most of these people coming from the eastern approach have not only had to ascend more vertical distance than we did, they’re doing it with less time to acclimate to the altitude.
We finally make it to Outpost Camp, the last campground before the end of the trail at Whitney Portal. The D.C. hikers Amy, Molly, and Sam pass through camp, and we all chat for a bit before they head out to the end of the trail. Dave and Ginny also come into camp. They’re staying for the evening, and have graciously volunteered the use of one of their bear-proof food canisters so we can camp with some legitimacy.
In camp, we see a lot of Stellar’s Jays, plus a large family of some largish brown birds (grouse? pheasants?) that walk right past our camp.
High Sierra Trail, Day 7. We break camp for the last time, and make an easy 3.5 mile hike down and out to the trailhead at Whitney Portal. There’s a tiny store and cafe there. It not only feels weird to walk on concrete again, or be surrounded with heavy food and drink options again — it simply feels weird to be in any kind of building structure again. We decide to split a single pancake. This is a good idea: the pancakes are thick and pan-sized.
Just before we leave the trailhead, Dave and Ginny arrive, so we say goodbye to them. The mother-and-daughter duo of Karen and Lauren also arrive, and share our shuttle down from Whitney Portal to the small town of Lone Pine. The shuttle driver is Kurt, who careens somewhat terrifyingly down the twisty mountain road into town. Per Kurt’s recommendation, we get a good lunch at the Lone Pine Grill. Kurt picks us up again and drives us a short distance to the tiny Lone Pine Airport.
The flight back over the Sierras is more exciting than expected. The pilot of the small plane, Dave, agrees to alter his flight plan a bit so we can fly over some of the terrain we’ve just spent the past week hiking. The air over Lone Pine is very hot, so the ascent is fairly bumpy. Dave’s trying to get enough altitude to make it over the mountains south of Mt. Whitney. It’s somewhat nerve-wracking to see him trying to spot various peaks and match them to the reference points on his map display. As we go over the tall peaks, the plane keeps bumping up and down. It’s nice to see a bit of Mt. Whitney, the Kern Canyon, Big Arroyo, and the Lodgepole area where we started — but much nicer to finally get over the mountains and into smoother air.
We land back at San Carlos Airport and make our way up to San Francisco. After a much-needed shower and some laundry cleaning, we have a nice pizza dinner at Ragazza. Chris gives Jan a ride back to San Francisco Airport, and he arrives home late, around 10:30 pm. It’s odd to recall waking up just that morning in a one-person tent in Outpost Camp below Mt. Whitney.
Liya and Jan head south to Washington’s Indian Heaven Wilderness for a weekend of backpacking. Like Bree did in June, Jan thought it would be fun for Liya to hike a bit of the PCT Jan’s planning to hike next year. The Indian Heaven Wilderness is just a bit south of Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams. It’s not exactly flat, but also not quite as steeply up-and-down as the central and northern Cascades.
Mt. Adams in the distance. It’s hard to see in the picture, but there’s a forest fire burning on Adams’ south (right) flank. According to the park rangers, we’re far enough from the fire to be safe.
Our destination for tonight is Lake Wapiki, seen here from the ridge of Lemei Rock. We’re kind of excited to see a great-looking unoccupied campsite on a peninsula sticking into the lake.
At Cultus Lake, we leave the main Indian Heaven trail and head east across a meadow.
When we get to the campsite we had our eyes on, we find a father and son sitting nearby. Luckily, they’re just stopping for a bite to eat, so we happily take the site. By the time the tent’s up, it’s getting a little chilly. Liya dives into her sleeping bag and warms up while reading.
By Lake Wapiki
The next day, smoke from the nearby forest fires has blown our way, so the countryside is enveloped in a thick haze. Here’s the a view of Lake Wapiki from the same spot where we’d taken a picture the day before.
As the trail winds through some brush, Jan realizes we’re walking through huckleberry bushes. Some of the bushes have been cleaned out by birds and bears, but we find a patch with plenty of fruit. We eat a bunch, then pick some to eat later.
After lunch, we come to a junction with the PCT proper, and begin heading south toward today’s destination, Blue Lake. This lake unfortunately turns out to have been the destination for many other people! All of the lake’s campsites are full. We take a lesser-used trail to another lake nearby, the somewhat ominously-named Tombstone Lake. The designated sites around Tombstone are also full, but we manage to find a reasonable site that’s empty. After setting up, we walk back up to Blue Lake to dip our feet in the water, wash off, and read by the lake.
We wake up early and break camp. On our way back toward Blue Lake and the PCT, we pass a small, unnamed lake that’s still and mirror-clear.
Like Bree did in June, Liya thought it would be fun to hide a geocache message for Jan to read next year. We find a tree a short distance off the trail with a small, empty hole at its base — just right for hiding a message. We cover up the hole with a snug-fitting rock, and mark the tree’s location on a GPS so it’ll be easy to find again next year.
Back at the car! We did a decent amount of hiking in the past three days — 18 miles overall — but it presented no problem for Liya.
We fly down to Reno, then drive to Fallen Leaf Lake in California for a week at at Stanford Sierra Camp. This is our fourth year attending the camp.
Bree (standing by ping pong table) listens to instructions from her camp counselors. She’s in the Menehunes group for the second year. Liya’s in Midorees again. Anya moves up to the Suaves (13–14 year olds) group. She’s a little disappointed that the Suaves group is a little small this year. Lots of other teens apparently attend schools that start before Labor Day — particularly this year, with Labor Day falling on September 7th — so those kids can’t attend this late summer week of camp.
Angela talks with fellow campers Gene and Fred on the “Social Hike”. This turns out to be a very short walk to a point overlooking the falls on Glen Alpine Creek.
Jan and our friend Ben head out into Desolation Wilderness for an overnight backpacking trip. The Desolation Wilderness abuts Sierra Camp, and we’ve all done numerous day hikes into the wilderness. This year Jan thought it might be fun to do an extended trip with an overnight stay, and Ben was up for the trip.
Angela drives Jan and Ben up to Lake Tahoe and the Meeks Bay trailhead, where the two shoulder their packs. Over the next two days, they’ll walk about 24 miles, all the way back to camp.
Jan and Ben eat lunch by crystal-clear Lake Genevieve.
Desolation Wilderness has lots of big pines and big boulders.
Ben near Phipps Pass, overlooking Grouse Lakes.
Camp for the night is by Middle Velma Lake. It’s dotted with tiny islands. They’d be fun to swim to — if the lake weren’t so cold.
It takes a while for Jan and Ben to find a campsite near the lake that’s both flat and has a view of the water, but they eventually find a good spot. After dinner, the stars come out. This far away from everything, there are tons of stars, and a very distinct Milky Way.