We left West Yellowstone Monday morning at sunrise, heading south to Jackson. It was a beautiful sunrise, but it was so cold outside!
We took the short scenic drive to Mesa Falls and found the place deserted. The 28 degrees and misting fall water kept us from enjoying the place too long. Brr!
Upper Mesa Falls:
For the final part of this trip report, I’m mostly revisiting terrain we crossed our first and second days. But the views are so great that it’s totally worth it! Unfortunately, our idea to climb Mt Williamson didn’t work out as planned. Feeling a bit spooked about the route after chatting with some other climbers and learning that just getting to the base of the peak was 9 hours round trip, we started considering other options.
The next morning, the intended day of our climb, we woke to gusting winds that nearly blew me off my feet, and waiting it out wasn’t working. The wind was picking up and we were well past the window of time where we should have left for Williamson.
So instead we decided to pack up and make it a long day on the trail, working our way back towards Forester Pass and hopefully making it to Kearsarge Lakes for the night. We estimated it to be about an 18 mile day with about 4000 ft of gain, including a 1500 ft climb to cap thins off right at the end. It wasn’t going to be an easy day. Considering we were already getting a late start due to our attempts to wait out the wind, I wasn’t completely confident we’d make it to Kearsarge Lakes that night. But we hoped to in order to meet up with some friends we thought might be staying there that night.
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On the morning of Day 5 we got up early and packed up, saying goodbye to Pavla since she was heading in a different direction than us. Her plan was to meet up with some other friends who were heading out via Mt Whitney. Meanwhile, David and I were heading over to Shepherd Pass to set up a base camp for the next couple of nights in order to climb Mt Tyndall and Mt Williamson.
We exited Wright Lakes basin via the simple cross-country Rockwell Pass, a shortcut that would quickly connect us to the trail heading towards Shepherd Pass from the JMT. Rockwell Pass is famous as the location of the highest observed tornado, but I was perfectly happy avoiding such excitement when we visited.
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We woke up the morning of Day 4 in Wright Lakes Basin, a lovely place that we seemingly had all to ourselves. This morning we weren’t packing up camp, rather we were off to climb Mt Barnard, the highest non-14er peak in the Sierra. And at 13,990 ft it’s close enough to 14k that maybe someday it will be measured as a 14er, so it’s nice to get it while it’s flying under the radar!
Although the summit of Barnard was less than 2 miles as the crow flies from camp, I had estimated our round trip route to be close to 10 miles of hiking. The southwest ridge of Barnard is an easy Class 1 slope but we still had some unknown terrain to navigate to even get to the ridge.
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Monday morning marked our departure from the John Muir Trail. After a short walk along the well-worn path where it circles south of Tawny Point, we said goodbye to the…
Despite being pretty wiped out from a long first day, I woke up feeling pretty refreshed and ready for another haul on Day 2 of our week long trip. This…
After missing my week in the Sierra last year due to injury, I couldn’t wait to get on the trail this year! The plan was to hike in over Kearsarge Pass and head south along the John Muir Trail, then off-trail to explore Wright Lakes Basin and the 14ers of the Shepherd Pass region (Tyndall and Williamson).
We drove out on Friday night and met up with Pavla at Whoa Nellie. Then we headed south to a decent campsite about a mile off of 395 that would get us some sleep above 7k to help with acclimation. In the morning we headed south to Bishop to fuel up at Jack’s with a big breakfast, then picked up our permit after the White Mountain Ranger District office opened at 8 am.
A couple more stops delayed us a bit, most important was Pavla’s search for packets of spam singles. They weren’t at her normal spot but the Bishop K-Mart delivered! David also picked up a pair of socks at Wilsons. Finally we were on our way to the trailhead at Onion Valley.
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The Sweetwater Mountains are an overlooked range thanks to their more showy neighbor, the Sierra Nevada. Occupying a piece of largely undeveloped land north of Bridgeport and bordered by highways…
Proving once again that there is no such thing as too much time in the mountains, I headed back up for another weekend of peak bagging around the northeast end of Yosemite. On Saturday, we climbed Warren Peak, a lovely pile of rocks on the eastern crest of the Sierra with a tremendous overlook of Mono Lake. On Sunday, we hiked to Johnson Peak, a unimpressive pile of rocks from a distance but a fun slabby climb along some beautiful benches up close.
Here are some photos from these two great climbs. If you are interested in the detailed route information for these peaks, I tried to capture it in the captions of the photos in the albums I linked to below. Neither peak is particularly challenging with route finding or terrain, and they would make fun entry level off-trail peaks in the Yosemite area.
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