On Friday night we drove 40 hungry miles on Route 395 before we found a restaurant that was open after 8. We stopped at the first one we found: Rhino’s Bar and Grille in Bridgeport. It was more fun than anything we could have hoped for, with a local crowd at the bar wearing cowboy hats and tight blue jeans, guys in camouflage playing pool, and a cheeseburger-eating patron wearing a red “DEAR LEADER CHAIRMAN MAOBAMA” t-shirt. A  jukebox playing Metallica completed the scene. It was the first night of the holiday weekend and everyone was having a great time. The food was good, and we’d definitely come back.

After dinner we spent the night at the Sportsmen’s Inn across the street, an 1880 hotel that could have passed for a haunted house. Our room was out in front, so we could hear the traffic on 395 all night and were illuminated by the motel sign outside our window. We probably could have gotten a better night’s sleep on the ground at Deadman Summit, as I did on the trip to University Peak a few weeks ago.

At 8:30 on Saturday morning Elizabeth and I arrived at the McGee Creek trailhead under a clear blue sky.Whereas Elizabeth was excited about the coming weekend, I felt uneasy. I felt as if I’d forced myself to come. There were only a few weeks of clear weather left in the Sierra Nevada, and I felt compelled to take advantage of them—to fit in as much time in the mountains as possible, whether I liked it or not, since I would regret not going enough, not accomplishing enough, not pushing myself enough, once the season was over. And I knew these were all the wrong reasons to go, which made me feel even crappier.

But I put those thoughts away as we started up the trail, confident that John Muir would be proved right about receiving the mountains’ good tidings [1]. The valley floor was filled with a gold and copper-tarnish mix of sagebrush, bitterbrush, and blooming rabbitbrush. It was split by a line of vibrant green trees tracing the course of McGee Creek and bordered by 11,000-foot ridges. At its far end a line of peaks rose past 12,000 feet.

The only trees next to the trail were a few aspen, juniper, and birch. We’d both brought our Chrome Domes, silver lightweight backpacking umbrellas, and they were perfect for the nearly treeless landscape. Almost everyone we met on the trail asked us about them.

The chutes on both sides of the valley were filled with aspens that were starting to show their fall colors. A few of the aspens had been felled by beavers and were used to build an impressive dam across McGee Creek, creating a great pond in the valley.

We would camp at Big McGee Lake for two nights. At 10,500 feet, it was just 8 miles from the trailhead, and with plenty of time to cover the distance, Elizabeth and I walked slowly and stopped whenever we felt the urge. No use hurrying to the lake and then sitting around until it got dark. Better to spend our time taking in the fantastic scenery. I could feel my mood improving as we walked farther into the wilderness and the mountains worked their influence.

As we climbed, the sagebrush and aspen gave way to a forest of lodgepole pines, hemlocks, and western white pines. It was cool and shady and McGee Creek, now a white-water cascade, roared through a rocky ravine.

We emerged from the lodgepole pine forest into subalpine meadows framed by spectacular mountains. The meadows were losing their green and turning auburn and the only conspicuous wildflowers left were ranger’s buttons. The trees—lodgepole and whitebark pines—were widely separated.

We arrived at brilliant, cobalt Big McGee Lake at 2 in the afternoon. This gave us an average pace of less than 1.5 miles per hour from the trailhead—not as slow as we had hoped, but slow enough.

Big McGee was set in a granite cirque topped by Red and White Mountain. A stiff wind was blowing down the cirque, so we picked a campsite sheltered by a grove of whitebark pines. Elizabeth took a nap in the tent while I walked around to admire the scenery.

At dinner Elizabeth and I introduced ourselves to Sam, another backpacker staying at the lake. He’d come up from San Diego on Friday and was planning on dayhiking to McGee Pass Sunday. This happened to be the same route we were taking to Red Slate Mountain, and we considered hiking to the pass together. We all cooked and ate dinner as the sun set, then went to our tents to sleep.

The wind blew all night long, roaring down the cirque, over the lake, through the pines, and across our tent, flapping its sides and blowing dust on our faces. But the wind quieted down often enough that we slept much better than we had at the frightening Sportmen’s Inn the night before. We were also blessed by a full moon that made walking outside the tent a phenomenal experience. We did not need our headlamps: everything—the stark peaks, the lake, the pines, and the boulders near our tent—glowed in its cold white light.

The next morning, Elizabeth and I saw Sam again as we packed our bags to hike up to Red Slate Mountain. We’d hike to McGee Pass together, then Sam would decide whether to continue to the summit or go back to camp.

We left camp at 8:30. After spending so much time staring at the lake on Friday, I was excited to see it from a new perspective. We hiked away and soon enough we were a few hundred feet above our campsite, with excellent views of the lake, the cirque, and the mountains around it.

We walked past timberline through a fantastic landscape of meadows, streams, and waterfalls. The only trees here were whitebark pines, and even they became isolated and gnarled as we gained elevation, eventually disappearing completely in the alpine tundra.

We stopped at a seep, green and dripping with water, that was a jackpot for wildflowers. From it grew bog orchids with their lovely white flowers, elephant’s heads with their tiny pink flowers, and grass of Parnassus, whose white, five-petaled flowers Elizabeth said looked like a miracle. Next to the ranger’s buttons, rose-colored mountain onion, scarlet paintbrush, and some kind of yellow monkeyflower added color to the scene.

In the canyon east of McGee Pass, we were flanked by steep ridges of layered red and white rock and walked amid their colorful rubble. At its end stood an imposing peak with two snow-filled cuoloirs. I’d read about the route up Red Slate Mountain and by all accounts it sounded like a walk-up. But the mountain in front of us looked more difficult than that, I thought, so it couldn’t be Red Slate.

On top of McGee Pass we got our first view of the landscape to the west: meadows split by lazy rivers and bordered by pine forests and granite mountains. Backpackers heading in the opposite direction congratulated us on making it to the pass, but we didn’t mention that we were going to the top of Red Slate Mountain and that getting to the pass was the easy part. Sam found the hike to McGee Pass quicker than he expected and decided to come with us to the summit.

By now I had confirmed that the imposing peak was in fact Red Slate Mountain. Its slope looked less steep from the pass, but it still looked more difficult than I’d imagined. In particular, a steep band of gray rock below the summit looked as if it might give us some difficulty, and I was eager to see what it would be like once we were on it.

The wind hadn’t let up since the night before and it whipped us as we climbed. We found an intermittent use trail but didn’t bother to stay on it at first since the slope was so mild. The mountain’s rocks were indeed like plates of red slate, and they sounded like wind chimes as we walked on them.

We took a break halfway up, then continued over slightly steeper terrain with bigger rocks. Getting off trail now meant scrambling with hands, so we tried harder to stay on it.

When we got to the band of gray rock I’d been concerned about, the terrain got steeper and more slippery, but we were able to get through it in a few minutes, using our hands for balance and scrambling most of the way.

Above the gray rock, the slope got mellow and we cruised to the summit, arriving at 12:30. On top, we were over a half mile higher than our campsite; the ridges around it and even Red and White Mountain were well below us.

Sam was quite happy to have made the climb, and he surprised me when he said that this was his first Sierra peak and that he’d never hiked this high before. The view from pass, he said, just didn’t compare with the view from the summit. Indeed! Being on a peak spoils one to the more modest joys of valleys, lakes, and passes. We snacked and rested on the summit, then took photos and signed the register.

Elizabeth and Sam were a little worried about the descent, but we were able to follow the use trail through the steep sections without any trouble. I thought we’d be home-free once we got to milder slopes lower on the mountain, but Elizabeth didn’t like how the rocks shifted under her feet and her progress was slow. The wind was incessant, and when we got down to the pass we took a break behind some rocks that gave us shelter.

At 3:30, back at camp, Sam packed his bag and left for a spot closer to the trailhead so that he could make an early departure the next morning. We then exchanged e-mail addresses and wished each other well.

Elizabeth and I were both weary from being out in the sun and wind all day, so we lay down on our sleeping pads under the pines. I had a headache and spent half an hour just staring at the branches of a whitebark pine swaying in the wind against the blue sky. Elizabeth was a little exhausted and joked that she didn’t like backpacking, or even like hiking, anymore.

With Sam gone, we had the campsite to ourselves—no one else in sight. We rinsed our hands and faces in the cold lake, then stuck our feet in until they got numb. We ate dinner at sunset, then watched the sky grow dark and the stars come out. Cleaned, rested, and with full stomachs, our moods improved considerably. Elizabeth no longer hated hiking and I’d finally gotten rid of my misgivings from the start of the trip. The wind had settled down. We went to bed at 8:30 and slept soundly all night.

This morning, we got up at 6 and packed up our gear. We left at sunrise, saying our goodbyes to Big McGee Lake and to the trees and critters that call it home. As we walked away, the top of Red and White Mountain blazed in the sunrise light while the moon, almost too bright to look at, hung over it in a deep blue sky.

We made good time on the way to the trailhead, getting back to our car in less than 4 hours. I particularly enjoyed traveling through the many life zones of the eastern Sierra Nevada, from subalpine meadows and woodlands to lodgepole forests to aspen groves to sagebrush flats, in so short an amount of time. We had both enjoyed ourselves tremendously on the backpacking trip and we were sad to leave. But a stop at the Whoa Nellie Deli for lunch lifted our spirits and prepared us for the return to civilization.

[1] ‘Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.’ – John Muir, Our National Parks

We began under warm blue skies at 11 in the morning, a late start that forced us to keep a good pace on the 15-mile hike. I expected no route-finding difficulties since we would be entirely on the Pacific Crest Trail, but we got lost immediately on a path that ended up disappearing into woods amid trashed, rusty appliances. We returned to the trailhead sign, realized the real trail went past it on the left, and got on our way.

We climbed steadily up rocky switchbacks through a relatively lush forest of aspens, mountain maple, ceanothus, and oceanspray. A few blue pleated gentians and bright red Indian paintbrush were a pleasant sight along the trail. We were surprised by trail runners flying past us in the opposite direction, perhaps completing their runs on the Mount Judah loop that starts from our trailhead.

In the more open forest higher up, we got some views of the surrounding area. There were domes of light-gray granite rolling off toward higher mountains in the distance, their sides sparsely forested with pines. To our west was the pretty Van Norden Meadow, green with scattered dark bushes.

We walked through thicker forests of red fir and mountain hemlock, passing under Sugar Bowl ski area’s Mount Judah lift and through some clearcuts that marked winter ski runs. Although no one would mistake them for wilderness, the ski runs were interesting, filled with wild mint and big rocks that are completely covered in snow during the winter.

We climbed higher, finally leaving the ski area as we passed the Mount Lincoln lift, and got an excellent view of the Pacific Crest Trail ahead of us. The trail wound for miles atop a mostly treeless ridge toward the dark and rocky Anderson Peak, promising excellent views and easy hiking.

On the ridge, we left the trail runners, as well as most of the dayhikers, behind us. The slope to our west was gentle, but to our east the ridge dropped off sharply hundreds of feet into a forest of dark green conifers. Elizabeth and I walked through a gray-green field of mule’s ears, sagebrush, and tobacco brush. Wildflowers included checker mallow, Brewer’s angelica, and scarlet gilia. The trees were sparse yet diverse, and we saw juniper, hemlock, and ponderosa and white pines, all of them shaped by the winds that blew constantly over the ridge.

On the west of Anderson Peak, I suddenly had to go off into the woods to answer nature’s call. I looked through my backpack and realized I was out of toilet paper; Elizabeth didn’t have any either. But then I saw the solution all around me: the vast fields of mule’s ear along the trail. I plucked one of the big, thick, fuzzy leaves and ducked behind some trees. I daresay the mule’s ear was better than toilet paper.

Only after passing Anderson Peak did we get a good view of Tinker Knob. It was nearly two miles away and we were a little tired from having already hiked for three hours, but the trail to the base of the peak looked fun and promised great views in every direction, so we made the final push.

A well-worn trail led to the base of Tinker Knob, but there didn’t seem to be a path to its summit, which sat atop a column of steep black rocks. We even passed by a pair of hikers sitting at the bottom, unaware that one could scramble to the top.

Elizabeth and I followed the use trail until it disappeared partway up the side of the peak, then scrambled up the steep, but solid, rocks for a minute before finding ourselves on the summit.

The view was fantastic. To the south, the peak plunged down hundreds of feet, giving us an excellent view of the high country of the Granite Chief Wilderness. To the north we could see the long ridge we’d come along, and even the ski lift at the top of Mount Lincoln.

After we’d signed the register, the hikers we’d passed at the base of Tinker Knob showed up on top, having followed us after they saw us come up. We all snacked and took photos, then made our way back down.

It had taken us 4 hours to get to the summit and it was now 3:30, so I wanted to keep a brisk pace to make sure we got back before dusk. We made good time on the downhills and got back in about 3.5 hours, even including a few long breaks.

On the way back, we met a trail runner and her two bold husky-crosses that followed her through the woods. We noticed that one of the panting dogs had holes through his tongue and the owner responded with a cellphone photo of the dog with its mouth full of quills from biting a porcupine.

On the way home, we stopped at Ikeda’s in Auburn, which had been recommended to me, but which I’d never visited. Elizabeth and I had a burger, a sandwich, fries, and a slice of fresh pie. They were all good, and we decided that we’d come back some day.

We drove over 10,000-foot Tioga Pass under a cold, star-filled sky and then took a dirt road from Deadman Summit to Obsidian Dome, where we parked our car and laid down our sleeping bags in the sagebrush. It was almost midnight, but the moon and the Milky Way still lit up the huge ponderosa pines around us. The elevation, about 8,000 feet, would help us acclimatize for the next day’s hike while we slept.

When Linda’s alarm woke us up at 5, it was 40 degrees and still dark. A common poorwill sang from the trees and the sky had just begun to lighten in the east. We changed into our hiking clothes, put away our sleeping bags, and were back on the road in 20 minutes.

We finished the drive to Onion Valley, at 9,200 feet, at 7:30 in the morning. There, Kelly, Linda, and I got ready for our hike and then waited for the rest of the group. Hank, Rob, Dara, and Sassan gradually showed up at the trailhead and we got on our way around 8:30, a half hour late. Linda, suspicious of the late start, made sure everyone brought their headlamps in case we finished after dark.

The trail from Onion Valley to Kearsarge Pass is a beautiful one, climbing through a wonderland of granite peaks and tall pines, crossed by wildflower-lined streams and roaring waterfalls and dotted by deep-blue lakes. Among the sagebrush, curl-leaf mountain mahogany, and pinemat manzanita were bright red Bridge’s penstemon, orange buckwheat, wavyleaf Indian paintbrush, and Leichtlin’s mariposa lily, which I’d just seen for the first time less than a week ago on the way to Tyee Lakes. In the greener areas near streams I saw bold orange Kelley’s lily, magenta fireweed, white Coulter’s daisy, and white yarrow and poison angelica.

Not long after we started our hike, we got our first view of University Peak and the route we’d take to its summit, the north face. As usual, the pictures I’d looked at before today hadn’t prepared me for how big it really was, rising over 3,000 feet above the valley.

After passing Gilbert Lake, we left the Kearsarge Pass Trail on the signed trail to Matlock Lake. We didn’t stay on the path for long, instead heading directly uphill through the forest toward Bench Lake. From the north end of Bench Lake, we could see University Peak’s north face more clearly, looking to me even more imposing and improbable than it had before: loose, steep chutes, ribs clogged with enormous boulders, and walls of granite split into vertical fissures.

After a short rest, we hiked over to the east side of Bench Lake where a solid Class 2 ridge led to Lake 3460 m at the bottom of the north face route. We stopped for some water, then traversed around the south side of the unnamed lake across a loose fan of scree to the more solid rib that runs down the north face. The terrain on the rib stayed mostly Class 2 with a few Class 3 sections, our group making its way over and around appliance-sized boulders lying on mostly solid gravel. This terrain continued for thousands of vertical feet, steadily draining my energy.

A few hundred meters below the ridge, we climbed solid Class 3 granite with some awkward moves that made a few of us nervous, but on the descent we found that this section was easily avoided by staying to the climber’s left.

Near the summit ridge, we stayed north of the crest on Class 2 ledges, sometimes descending a little. We reached an apparent impasse near the summit, but a cairn showed the way through a small window between large talus. We all squeezed through it and kept on our way.

When our ledge came to an end at a granite wall, it was about the width of a sidewalk and angled slightly toward a hideous cliff that no one went near. Opposite the cliff was a snowfield some 20 feet high blocking any simple path to the ridge. I was ready to call it quits until Linda and Kelly kicked some steps up the snow. I was hesitant to follow, since a slip on the snow could mean falling off the ledge, but I tested the steps and they were firm. I made my way up, mindful not to look behind me at the cliff, and soon found myself above the snow on solid granite. One more brief scramble and I was on the summit.

The entire group summitted at 2:30, 6 hours after we started. The views were stunning: endless brown and gray mountains fading into hazy blue distances, towering over vast basins filled with forests, meadows, and wandering streams.

We signed the summit register notebook (which was completely soaked) but didn’t linger, since we had a long way back. I didn’t like the prospect of having to descend the snowfield to our little ledge, and I was eager to get it over with, so I was the second one down after Linda. I clawed the snow with my hands, numbing my fingers, but the downclimb was straightforward and I found myself once again standing happily on rock.

We descended the way we came, angling right to avoid the awkward Class 3 from the ascent. After that, we naturally veered left into the fall line and off the rib, toward the broad gully in the middle of the north face, where we could plunge-step down the sandy slope. But this wasn’t without its perils, as one of us sent down some football-sized boulders, nearly hitting Hank’s arm.

The loose rock notwithstanding, the descent was easier than the ascent, and I took time to enjoy the scenery and wildflowers. Up there the flowers were strictly alpine, offering themselves only to those who expend the effort required to come see them. They grew in sparse, isolated clumps on the steep rocks: bright yellow alpine gold and purple, pungent sky pilot.

After the rock fall, I’d had enough of the loose scree and traversed to the right, back onto the rib, where I once again had solid footing. But the fall line got the better of me again, and I dropped down into the chute to the right of the rib too soon as I tried to angle toward Lake 3460 m. The chute was quite loose and I had a few exciting moments where I was sliding down the mountainside on a carpet of rolling rocks; I would step back, worried I’d set off a chain-reaction rock slide otherwise. But as I neared the lake, the talus became more solid and I rejoined the rest of the group.

A low-angle snowfield gave Kelly a chance to boot-ski down to the lake, which he did in fine style. I followed, squatting down on the snow and glissading as far as its angle allowed – much more fun than walking on talus. Down at the lake, a few of us joked that it was the only fun we’d had all day.

We trekked back onto the Matlock Lake Trail and then the Kearsarge Pass Trail. Walking on maintained trail again was a breeze, but I’d forgotten how long the return to the car would be. But there were no worries. The sun was setting and the mountains were glowing amber under purple clouds. The wildflowers looked even more colorful than they had in the morning. And, as I walked, a nearly full moon rose and I watched the last light slip from the mountains across the Owens Valley as well as University Peak.