High Sierra Topix

I'll be hiking a bunch of your route a week later, so I'll keep an eye out for your body. I'll be hiking out of North Lake. Solitude will be no problem off the major trails, and I love the Sierra in August - the weather is better than the Rockies. I think you should just suck it up and take a bear canister. They are actually kind of liberating.

I'm trying to remember what forum I know you from. Anyway, have fun. You picked a great location. If you do 1/3 of what you have planned, it will be the trip of a lifetime.

Packsaddle is for someone comfortable with steep snow, its northern side has a snowfield that requires an ice axe and possibly crampons if one doesn't time the pass for later in the day. It is an alternative to the others, snow vs endless rock.
Lobes upper section is rocky and steep on the eastern side but the rocky descent is not nearly as long or tedious as any of the other passes.

Thanks for the additional input everyone. I've updated the route to a 2.0 version, posted here again for convenience: http://caltopo.com/m/M1SL

Doing 10 days now. The Bear Basin/Seven Gables area looked particularly interesting to me so I allotted more time there. This is shaping up to be an awesome route!

toejam wrote:I'll be hiking a bunch of your route a week later, so I'll keep an eye out for your body. I'll be hiking out of North Lake. Solitude will be no problem off the major trails, and I love the Sierra in August - the weather is better than the Rockies. I think you should just suck it up and take a bear canister. They are actually kind of liberating.

I'm trying to remember what forum I know you from. Anyway, have fun. You picked a great location. If you do 1/3 of what you have planned, it will be the trip of a lifetime.

Ha, good luck finding it It does seem like solitude will not be a problem off the major trails, which I tried my hardest to avoid. What's your planned route? Yeah your name sounds familiar too, maybe backcountrypost, backpacker, bigbendchat, linvillegorge or haz forum?

Move your line around lake 11,910 to Alpine col to the East side. Guaranteed.

MetalBackpacker wrote:What's your planned route?

Roughly your loop (without all the peaks), only starting at North Lake on the east side and crossing Lamarck Col, and returning over Piute Pass (skipping the Alpine Col grind). I don't expect to do all of that in a week, but am considering as far south as Black Giant Pass and as far north as Italy Pass. Right now I'm thinking about seeing McGee Lakes & Davis Lakes from Evolution Valley. But I'm leaving the plan really flexible, so I may get stoked and want to see Ionian Basin and never see much of Humphreys Basin, or I may decide to hike on down Evolution Valley and spend more time up north. I may narrow the scope over the next few weeks of daydreaming. I've been on the John Muir Trail and to Piute Canyon & Pass, but haven't seen the rest of it.

Jimr wrote:Move your line around lake 11,910 to Alpine col to the East side. Guaranteed.

Ah thanks, that looks better! Just went back and read the description for Alpine Col and saw that there too. Map updated.

toejam wrote:

MetalBackpacker wrote:What's your planned route?

Roughly your loop (without all the peaks), only starting at North Lake on the east side and crossing Lamarck Col, and returning over Piute Pass (skipping the Alpine Col grind). I don't expect to do all of that in a week, but am considering as far south as Black Giant Pass and as far north as Italy Pass. Right now I'm thinking about seeing McGee Lakes & Davis Lakes from Evolution Valley. But I'm leaving the plan really flexible, so I may get stoked and want to see Ionian Basin and never see much of Humphreys Basin, or I may decide to hike on down Evolution Valley and spend more time up north. I may narrow the scope over the next few weeks of daydreaming. I've been on the John Muir Trail and to Piute Canyon & Pass, but haven't seen the rest of it.

Well at least you have a lay of the land then. It's tough to figure out where exactly I want to go in places I haven't been, but that's one reason why I kinda like doing long hikes like this. When I get a chance to return to these areas in the future, I'll have a pretty good idea of where I want to return to and spend more time. I'm looking forward to the Ionian Basin too. I wanted to camp below Scyalla but was having a hard time adjusting my route to fit that in. Oh well. I'll be doing a lot of daydreaming too, and I'm sure this route will see more modifications before I go. Just sent in my permit request today. Called yesterday and there were 6 spots left at Florence Lake on my start date so I should be good to go.

If it were me, I'd also look very seriously into the ridge you plan on using to move North from Mt. Fiske. I think you're better bet would be to backtrack and go over the saddle between Fiske and Warlow. You could even drop your pack and bag Fiske, then retrieve on the way down. That whole ridge looks pretty nasty.

That's not a bad idea too. I checked out that route first on summitpost, it's supposed to be class 2/3 (northeast ridge). here's what they have to say about routes up Fiske:

The routes described by Secor, The High Sierra: Peaks, Passes and Trails, 2d ed., at page 287 are: [1] Class 4--the North Ridge; [2] Class 2/3- the Northeast Ridge (climb the ridge from the basin west of Mt. Wallace to the lower east summit and continue to the higher western summit); [3] Class 2 routes--the West Face (ascend the chute in the center of the West Face from the cirque between Mt. Fiske and Mt. Huxley), the Southeast Ridge (from Helen Lake near Muir Pass go north to gain this ridge) and the Southwest Ridge (ascend the ridge from the saddle between Mt. Fiske and Mt. Warlow); and [4] Class 1--the broad slope to the east of the Southwest Ridge).

Still, I will seriously consider doing just what you said.

Check the section out on google earth for another impression. Secor and summitpost are climbing sites and must be treated as such when carrying a pack. Secor can be especially loose in his class 2 designations. There are many areas that climbers would consider class 2 without much caveat, but put a pack on your back and it can become treacherous.

Good points. If this was the only way I could continue on my route as planned I might have consider doing it, but I'm actually working on remapping my days 2-4 anyway. I If I do this alternate route as shown on my caltopo map, I'll bypass Fiske altogether. I figure I have enough climbing scheduled in Ionian Basin that I should probably spread it out a little more, and could add climbs later in the hike on the northern end of the loop. Maybe Seven Gables.