I’d wanted to hike the High Sierra Trail, a west-to-east traverse of the southern Sierra Nevada, for over a year. This spring, I secured a permit to hike it in late July, but as the permit date approached, the unusually deep snowpack was blocking trails, swelling streams, and endangering hikers. Right up to the start of the trip, I was not convinced we could safely complete it.

Although many people expressed interest in the trip, only one showed up. Lawrence — a school teacher, avid photographer, and experienced backpacker — committed to the trip and met us in Lone Pine. After debating whether we could safely complete the trail and considering alternative trips, we all decided to go for it.

Day 1. Crescent Meadow to Nine Mile Creek. 9.4 miles. 8:50 AM to 5:35 PM.

We spent the night at Lodgepole campground, then pick up our permit and drive to Crescent Meadow. The weather is auspicious — sunny and clear.

We start hiking at 6,700 feet, in an old-growth, middle-elevation forest that has a few fine specimens of giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum). We gawk at them, but the grove is small and we’re quickly out of it. The snow has melted from this area only recently, and the wildflowers are abundant.

The creeks on this stretch of trail were swollen by melting snow into dangerous torrents just weeks ago, but they are tame now and we skip over them without getting our feet wet.

The trail has an excellent view down Kaweah Canyon and we can see the Central Valley to the west and the Great Western Divide — which we plan to cross on day three — to the east. The view, unfortunately, is obscured by smoke from the Lion Fire, which is being allowed to burn wild to our south.

In the late afternoon, we see a dark animal lumber across the trail: a bear. I yell at it to try to scare it away — as I’m supposed to — but the bear is no stranger to hikers and knows I won’t back up my threats. It climbs onto a rotting log next to the trail and cracks it open to look for bugs, ignoring us.

Later, we arrive at Nine Mile Creek, finding the campsite next to it empty. We set up camp. Some hikers pass by in the evening, but none of them stay, and we have the site to ourselves.

Day 2. Nine Mile Creek to Hamilton Lake. 7.3 miles. 8:15 AM to 1:35 PM.

We wake up and start climbing gradually through a beautiful, ancient forest of white fir (Abies concolor). The weather is cool and clear.

We stop at Bearpaw High Sierra Camp and admire the view. The wildfire smoke from the previous evening has cleared and we look at the high, snowy peaks of the Great Western Divide, which we will cross tomorrow.

This section of the High Sierra Trail is blasted directly into granite cliffs and alternates between hot stark rock and cool green areas where the trail is crossed by little rivulets and the plants and flowers grow like weeds.

We cross the dramatic granite chasm of Lone Pine Creek over a bridge, then climb again.

We arrive at Hamilton Creek. We can ford it, but the creek is deep and we are just feet from the precipice of a waterfall. Instead, we cross on a large fallen log.

To our side are the immense granite spires of Angel Wings.

We hike to the campsites around Hamilton Lake and I immediately realize why the permit quota from Crescent Meadow is met so quickly: the lake is spectacular. We set up our tent near some bare granite where we have a front-row view. The lake rests in a giant, steep-walled granite cirque and is fed by five waterfalls, each hundreds of feet long. Their roar echo across the lake. Beyond the cirque are the jagged peaks of the Great Western Divide.

The lake is at 8,240 feet, but Kaweah Gap, where we will cross the Great Western Divide tomorrow, is at 10,700 feet. As I go to sleep, I wonder how much snow we’ll have to hike through over the gap, and, if there is a lot of snow, what that will mean for the creek crossings that follow.

Day 3. Hamilton Lake to Moraine Lake. 14.3 miles. 7:00 AM to 6:40 PM.

We wake up at six in the morning so we can climb out of the Hamilton Lake cirque in the cool shade before the sun rises over the the edge.

As we climb, we walk through beautiful hillside meadows filled with wildflowers and crossed by streams draining the melting snow. Higher, the meadows give way to dirt and sprouts. Climbing is taking us back in time through the seasons.

Higher still, we reach solid snow. The snow is firm and the hiking is easy. Precipice Lake, whose dark water and stark cliffs were made famous by Ansel Adams’s Frozen Lake and Cliffs, is still completely frozen and covered in snow.

We hike around Precipice Lake and toward Kaweah Gap. The snow is continuous. It is streaked with pink from algae, and later we find that the pink has stained our shoes, socks, and feet.

We reach Kaweah Gap and stand on top of the Great Western Divide. In front of us is Big Arroyo, a long, wide glaciated valley lined by tall peaks. The sky is sunny and clear except for a streak of smoke from the Lion Fire drifting to the northeast.

We hike down into Big Arroyo, frequently losing the trail in snowfields before we reach Big Arroyo Creek, at 9,500 feet.

I’d been worried about the Big Arroyo Creek crossing, which is often difficult early in the season, but it is only shin-deep and we make it across easily.

On the other side of Big Arroyo, we climb again, toward the Chagoopa Plateau. The climb is much longer than any of us expect. The Chagoopa Plateau is fantastic: broad and sandy with huge foxtail (Pinus balfouriana) and lodgepole pines (Pinus contorta). The trees are sparse and leave excellent views of the Kaweah Peaks. But we don’t enjoy it. We are tired, and the place is swarming with the worst mosquitoes we’ve encountered yet.

We are exhausted when we get to Moraine Lake. It’s at 9,300 feet, but its water is much warmer than we expect for the altitude. We all hurry to swim and rinse ourselves off before the sun sets. We are far from any road, and no one else shows up at camp. We spend a silent night at the lake.

Day 4. Moraine Lake to Kern Hot Spring. 7.5 miles. 8:30 AM to 2:10 PM.

After yesterday’s long hike to Moraine Lake, we all look forward to a short hike down to Kern Canyon and Kern Hot Spring.

We hike away from Moraine Lake and descend from the Chagoopa Plateau. Through the trees, we make out three high peaks to the northeast. We check our map, and they are what we suspect: mounts Young, Hale, and Whitney. This is our first view of Mount Whitney, but we are still three days away from standing on top of it.

As we descend, the air becomes warmer and the vegetation comes to resemble that of the western foothills where we started. We pass by black oaks (Quercus kelloggii) and canyon oaks (Quercus chrysolepis). Other hikers report rattlesnakes under the ferns at the bottom of the canyon.

Near the Kern River, we reach the lowest point of the High Sierra Trail at 6,700 feet. We walk through a prehistoric forest beneath granite walls thousands of feet high. The air is warm and humid, and puddles and mud cover the trail. The trees are enormous and the understory is lush with bushes and ferns.

Before the hot spring we cross the south fork of Rock Creek. It is knee-deep and fast and we all cross with care. This is the last crossing today, but tomorrow there will be several more.

We are hugely disappointed when we get to Kern Hot Spring. It is a small cement tub next to the Kern River, empty, with a trickle of warm water dripping into it. We dismiss it immediately and hike ahead and set up our tents at the nearby camp.

Later, I return to the hot spring, where I spot some Sierra lilies (Lilium kelleyanum) and some very showy stream orchids (Epipactis gigantea) near the tub. Investigating the tub itself, I realize that it has two plugs: one for the drain and one for the spout. I plug the drain and unplug the spout. A torrent of fresh hot water fills the tub in seconds. The hot spring doesn’t seem so bad anymore! I go back to camp and tell everyone about my discovery and we take turns soaking next to the Kern River while the sun sets.

Day 5. Kern Hot Spring to Upper Kern Valley. 8.7 miles. 6:45 AM to 2:45 PM.

Today is the day we cross the Kern Canyon and the many streams that flow into it.

The first is the stream draining Guyot Flat. It is easy, which gives us confidence for the others.

The next is Whitney Creek. It is fast and deep and, although we are nervous, Elizabeth and I prepare to cross it. Then Lawrence decides to check upstream for an easier crossing. Several minutes later, he returns, reporting that there is an easy log crossing uphill. We all go over the logs and cross the stream safely.

Wallace Creek, the last significant crossing of the day, is wide and fast. Elizabeth and Lawrence cross it on a long narrow log, but I can’t stay balanced on it. I try, back off, and try again. I don’t have any choice but to ford the creek. I put on my technical sandals and get in. It is fast and thigh-deep, but I hold on to the log and cross without a problem. Today’s stream crossings are done.

Above Junction Meadow, we stop for a break among huge, silent Jeffrey pines (Pinus jeffreyi), then continue toward Upper Kern Valley. There, beyond the Wallace Creek trail junction, we find a good campsite next to an old cabin. The mosquitoes force us to dine in our tents. No one else shows up at camp. The only sound comes from the river.

Day 6. Upper Kern to Guitar Lake. 10 miles. 6:55 AM to 3:30 PM.

We start hiking the Wallace Creek trail, toward the last significant creek crossing of the trip: Wright Creek. We reach the creek, and it is spectacular. We are near tree line, on a stretch of trail overlooking the Kaweah Peaks. The water comes down over red granite, swirling for a second in a pool that covers the trail, then tumbling over boulders into the canyon before disappearing into the forest. But it is not intimidating. We put on our technical sandals and cross it without any serious difficulties.

The sky is remarkably clear. The wind has changed direction and the smoke from the previous days is completely gone. As the day goes on, small puffy clouds appear for the first time during the trip, indicating that the air has become more moist.

We hike a short section of the John Muir Trail, where we get some classic Sierra Nevada hiking. The air is cool and clear, the mosquitoes are gone, and we are surrounded by gnarled foxtail pines and granite peaks.

We meet ranger Rob Pilewski and he tells us that he hasn’t seen too many people come through on the High Sierra Trail this season. We give him all the trail condition information we can.

I ask him about the weather and he tells us that, yes, there’s been a change, and that there’s a 20% chance of afternoon storms tomorrow, a boilerplate summer forecast for the eastern Sierra Nevada.

“Nothing too dire.”

We continue to Guitar Lake, where we find an excellent campsite. We are at 11,500 feet and there are no trees, only granite, grass, and wildflowers. We are on the back side of Mount Whitney and surrounded by mountains whose summits easily clear thirteen and fourteen thousand feet.

After dinner, we hear a helicopter. Even as the sound of its blades gets louder, we look for it without success. Suddenly, it clears the ridge to our west and flies right over us. After a week in the wilderness without seeing a road, building, or motorized vehicle, the helicopter is a completely unexpected intrusion. We stare at it as if we’re some uncontacted tribe in the Amazon.

The helicopter lands on the other side of Guitar Lake and carries a hiker away on a stretcher. We later find out that someone with a replacement hip had dislocated it but was unable to pop it back into place: a much less serious injury than we had feared.

We go to sleep at dusk, excited to climb Mount Whitney and finish our hike tomorrow.

Day 7. Guitar Lake to Whitney Portal. 17.1 miles. 5:45 AM to 3:30 PM.

The night does not get cold, with temperatures staying above 45. More disturbingly, the clouds from the day before do not go away. Puffy clouds are gliding over the Sierra Crest when we wake up at five in the morning.

By six, we are climbing the switchbacks on the west side of Mount Whitney. We watch the sunrise over the Kaweahs and all the terrain we’ve traversed in the last week.

At the Mount Whitney Trail junction (13,480 feet), we drop our heavy backpacks and put on daypacks for the hike to the summit. We are acclimated to high elevation and move quickly, reaching the summit (14,505 feet) at 9:30.

By now, the clouds’ tops are getting taller and their bases are getting flat and dark. I know we have to descend more than six thousand feet over the course of eleven miles to get back to our car and I’m sure a storm will develop before we’re done. We take some pictures and I rush Elizabeth and Lawrence off the summit.

Before we get to our backpacks, some light rain has started to fall. All three of us put on our rain gear. Dayhikers stream toward the summit, some of them unprepared for bad weather, and most of them oblivious of the impending storm.

We reach the trail junction, put on our packs, and then hike to Trail Crest (13,700 feet).

There, a woman coming up the trail says she is on her annual Mount Whitney hike and plans on continuing to the summit.

“The clouds don’t look too ominous”, she says.

I want to believe her, but we rush down from Trail Crest. There are dozens of people above us on the mountain, many of them still going up.

We start the 99 switchbacks that descend the steep talus slope below from Trail Crest. Elizabeth counts them off. We hear thunder after the first one.

More thunder and lightning follow. Getting hit by lightning is a real risk amid the treeless landscape, and the shelter of canyons and trees is thousands of feet below us. There is nothing for us to do but hike steadily and carefully until we reach safety.

A few switchbacks later, we start getting pelted with pea-size hail. It comes down hard, covering the trail. We keep hiking.

The hail turns to rain as we reach the bottom of the switchbacks and Trail Camp. I turn back toward Mount Whitney and see it enveloped in dark, swirling clouds. I take my last photo of the day.

When we reach trees, I feel safer from the lightning. Then I notice that they are foxtails and lodgepoles, which grow around 10,000 feet. That means we still have some 2,000 feet to descend to the safety of Whitney Portal and our car.

We keep hiking through the rain. We hear what sounds like loud thunder, but look up to find we are instead listening to the sound of a rock slide over Bighorn Park. House-size boulders tumble down thousands of feet in slow motion, releasing huge clouds of dust. I don’t know if the trail will pass below the rock slide area. With each minute, I relinquish more control of my fate to the mountain. I keep hiking as quickly as I can.

The rain and lightning never let up. Elizabeth and I arrive at Whitney Portal at 3:30. Safety at last. We are exhausted, cold, and soaked. We worry about Lawrence, whom we haven’t seen since the 99 switchbacks, but he bounds down the trail a few minutes later. The rain has gotten harder and the wind has started blowing. We go into the Whitney Portal Store where Elizabeth and I sit on the floor among a throng of soaked hikers. We order cheeseburgers and fries and savor every bite. The power in the store flickers on and off.

When we get out to leave, water and debris are streaming over the road. The patio outside the store is flooded with six inches of water, soaking the backpacks left outside. The rain comes down cliffs in waterfalls thousands of feet long. Lightning bounces off the peaks.

As we drive away, a small creek has turned black and overflowed its culvert, pouring over the road. The pond across from the store is overflowing and flooding the road. We weave our car around boulders that have tumbled onto Whitney Portal Road.

As we approach Lone Pine, we roll down our windows and take in the warm, dry desert air. We are safe at last.

In town, we trade stories with other hikers who were on the mountain. We read more stories online. It was one of the worst summer storms to hit Mount Whitney in years. Things got much worse after we left. Flash floods swelled the rivers and washed out sections of trail. Creek crossings that were easy for us became impassable. Rock slides continued. Hikers were stranded on the trail overnight. One group of campers decided they’d had enough and abandoned their tents, leaving their sleeping bags and wallets behind. No one was killed or seriously injured.

Related posts:

1. Wyanokie High Point loop hike from Otter Hole

The Sierra Nevada will enjoy an Indian summer this late September weekend, with clear skies and highs in the 70s. Elizabeth and I are still fit from our four-day backpack to the Rae Lakes, so I thought it would be a perfect time to revisit Pyramid Peak and take it off my grudge-list of peaks I’d failed to climb.

We hiked Pyramid Peak via Rocky Canyon. Even though the trail is not official, not on any maps, and doesn’t have a trailhead parking area, it’s still tremendously popular. The parking area on the south side of Route 50 was full, so I had to park on the north side.

We searched the roadside for the start of the trail while cars blasted by us at 60 miles per hour. Never mind scrambling to the summit, the most dangerous part of this hike is walking along the highway.

We found a faint trail on the east side of Rocky Canyon. We followed it up the hillside and into the forest, where it became easier to follow. It became wide and clear, in fact, and stayed that way until the summit cone.

We climbed through a fine, old-growth mid-elevation forest of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), sugar pine (Pinus lambertiana), white fir (Abies concolor), and incense-cedar (Calocedrus decurrens).

Many trails in the Sierra Nevada are graded for stock, which means that even in mountainous terrain they rarely climb more than, say, 500 feet per mile. But not this one. Neither officially sanctioned nor maintained, it shot straight up the mountain while winding around boulders and trees: a welcome break from the mule trails.

The trail crossed to the west side of the creek and leveled off. The forest was thinner here and the mid-elevation trees gave way to sparse mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana), western white pine (Pinus monticola), lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta), and red fir (Abies magnifica). There were some aspen (Populus tremuloides), but their leaves had not yet turned their fall color.

We saw the golden summit cone of Pyramid Peak through the trees. The trail was still easy to follow, and it took us between clumps of stunted whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) right to the bottom of the summit cone.

We got to the bottom of the summit cone at 1:45. The last 400 feet were a jumble of granite blocks varying in size from toaster to sofa. Elizabeth and I carefully picked our way up the talus, using our hands for balance when navigating around the more uneven blocks. We weaved left and right, but any route seemed as good as any other.

An animal on the summit was watching us. Was it a lone dog? When we got closer to the summit, we saw that it was a golden retriever. She ran toward us, very happy to meet us. Another retriever poked his head up from behind the rocks. How did they get here?

We found the retrievers’ owners lying down on the summit rocks. They were a couple from nearby Pollock Pines and they’d come up the Lyons Creek Trail. Their golden retrievers scrambled around the rocks, so happy they let out occasional squeals of delight.

It was 2:15. At 9,985 feet, Pyramid Peak is the highest point on the Crystal Range, and the views from the summit were excellent. To the northwest shimmered the other ragged peaks of the Crystal Range. To the northeast, 2,000 feet below, lay the dark blue Aloha Lakes, hundreds of them, set in the treeless Desolation Valley. Beyond them rose Mount Tallac, a peak we hiked earlier this summer.

We started our hike down at 3:00. Going down the talus wasn’t any easier than going up, and Elizabeth and I moved slowly, trying not to lose our balance or to dislodge any boulders.

Once we were back on the trail, we made good time on the descent.

The days are getting shorter, and the sun set behind Rocky Canyon as we hiked. Although the mountains behind Lover’s Leap still glowed with afternoon light, the ancient forest of incense-cedar and white fir was cool and blue. We got back to the car at 5:45, a bit over seven hours round-trip.

Related posts:

1. Desolation Wilderness Mount Tallac hike
2. Castle Peak and Andesite Peak from Donner Summit

We started hiking at 9:15. The day was warm and sunny and the mosquitoes from earlier in the summer were gone. We hiked through a forest of white fir (Abies concolor), Jeffrey pine (Pinus jeffreyi), and sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata). We were on the east side of the Sierra Nevada, and the sagebrush in particular was evidence that we weren’t too far from the Great Basin.

We walked by Floating Island and Cathedral lakes, two small, pretty lakes that seemed to be destinations in themselves for many hikers. Beyond Cathedral Lake the trail climbed out of the forest and up a broad cirque on several rocky switchbacks. We’d had a wet spring and there were still large patches of snow next to the trail, one of which we had to hike around. The views behind us of Fallen Leaf Lake and Lake Tahoe were excellent.

More switchbacks led us to the top of the cirque, where we were greeted by a fine view of the aptly named Crystal Range: shimmering granite peaks still striped with snow.

We turned north toward Mount Tallac. The trail meandered for a mile through flower-filled meadows broken by groves of ancient conifers. Here was an old western white pine (Pinus monticola) with thick, scaly bark; here a mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana) with branches gracefully drooping at the tips; here lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta subsp. latifolia), denizen of high-elevation forests throughout western North America; here, at treeline, whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) and its attendant Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana).

A four-foot tall pile of rocks marked the trail leading to the summit. The path wove through big, dark, shattered rocks, but it was so well-worn that we climbed largely without needing our hands for balance.

Within minutes we were on the summit. Before I describe the views, let me say that it was packed. I’d never seen so many people on a peak: families, friends, children, dogs—everyone was there enjoying the excellent weather.

We saw Lake Tahoe, Emerald Bay, and South Lake Tahoe. The sky was remarkably clear, revealing crisp outlines of distant peaks. The only clouds were a few puffy white ones on the southern horizon.

We were going to spend the night in South Lake Tahoe again, so without a long drive home to think about, we wiled away our time on the summit, eating and enjoying the view. Resident critters scurried around visiting hikers, hoping for food in the form of handouts or carelessness.

I took out my camera and took pictures of them.

Golden-mantled ground squirrels (Spermophilus lateralis) popped onto the rocks, standing on their hind legs to scan the summit for any offered or neglected bits of food.

There were even a couple of yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris)—or maybe there was just one that kept disappearing into the rocks and reappearing somewhere else—I couldn’t tell.

We cruised through the meadows and then down the cirque, soaking up views the entire way. Next to a stream, from an unseen spot in the dense vegetation, came the low booming of a sooty grouse (Dendragapus fuliginosus). We took a pleasant break at Cathedral Lake then went on to finish at 5:15, 8 hours after we started.

The drive to our motel was only 10 minutes. I could get used to this.

Related posts:

1. Pyramid Peak hike via Rocky Canyon
2. Mount Rainier Snow Lake hike
3. Olympic Peninsula Mount Townsend hike

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

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