We’re avid day hikers. She has a lot of backpacking experience from when she was growing up; my only recent backpacking experience is a 2 night/30 mile backpacking trip we did in Great Smoky Mountain NP last October that included a 19 mile/2300 ft day.
Our main interest is big mountain scenery + lakes. We’ve done a bunch of hikes in Yosemite/Tahoe/SEKI, but we’ve never been in the Sierra backcountry (and we're very excited about it!). We’ve hiked at elevation before and had no issues with altitude sickness.
Difficult day hikes that we’ve done:
- Mist Trail -> Panorama Trail -> Four Mile Trail
- Half Dome
- Clouds Rest
- Static Peak Divide (GTNP, 16mi, 5000ft)
- Paintbrush/Cascade Canyon (GTNP, 24mi, 4000ft)
- Hidden Lake Lookout Trail (Cascades, 9mi, 3500ft)
- Agnew Meadows to Tuolumne Meadows
- Rae Lakes Loop (we day hiked up to Paradise Valley last summer and loved that area, but I worry about squeezing this one into 3 days. We might be able to swing a 4th day.)