High Sierra Topix

I returned from Little Lakes Valley last night. On Friday, July 7, I first attempted to reach Ruby Lake. After about a mile and half or so, I encountered heavy snow filled with sun cups. I put on microspikes, but still only managed to travel about a quarter mile in 45 minutes to an hour. I gave up at that point since it seemed to be nothing except more sun cups to get to Ruby Lake and so went down to camp in Little Lakes Valley.

The Little Lakes Valley trail had snow on and off beginning at the trail junction with the Mono Pass Trail. The snow coverage became 100% at Long Lake. Long Lake still had ice flows on Sunday, July 9. The ice flows finally disappeared completely late Tuesday. I ended up camping at the far end of Long Lake. From talking to people I met who had gone higher, the snow coverage continued at 100% most of the way to Gem Lakes.

meant to post this earlier in the week:

the road to the trailhead was ok: an old chevy prizm made it up before us.

very brushy on kibbie ridge.
tons of water at sasche springs and elsewhere - lots of trail-as-creek going on.
no problematic stream crossings though we did wade quite a bit, often to avoid brush around lakes.
still a fair amount of snow at and above 8k. one friend postholed and slammed his leg on a rock -- painful but thankfully not serious.

there's a prescribed burn west of cherry creek that is sending a bit of smoke into the backcountry, depending on the wind.

Route taken: Trail starting at the Lodgepole Campground in Sequoia National Park. The goal was to day hike on trail to see if Silliman Creek crossing was passable, and to head up to Twin Lakes and maybe beyond towards Silliman Pass to check conditions if time allowed. At the trail crossing Silliman Creek is deep and moving fast. However, a bit upstream is a decent crossing, 24-30" deep, mostly calm and with a narrow fast section, then you would need to scramble up a steep hillside and can rejoin the trail. I did cross, but then immediately crossed back as the fast section was at the top of my comfort level and it was 9 AM; my concern was that it would be worse in the afternoon and I wasn't prepared to be trapped on the other side. Side note: I did meet a backpacker on trail who was returning from Twin Lakes - lakes still frozen, and he turned back from going over Silliman Pass due to trail washouts and lots of downed trees. Instead I decided to take the route towards Silliman Lake to see how far I could get before hitting snow.

Elevations: Trailhead 6,760, stopping point on way to Silliman Lake 9,260 feet

Difficult sections: At 9,260 feet snow coverage began to be 80 - 90% on the sides off of the granite section that the creek runs through. I've walked up the granite before but there were multiple sections of water coming down, did not feel safe to continue due to the risk of slippage, and I turned back. The lake is about 10,040.

Special equipment needed/used: I did not have any. The snow fields were solid and compact; traction devices would have been helpful if an attempt was made to continue.

Possible alternate route: N/A

I day hiked into George Lake from the Potter Pass Cutoff trailhead on Saturday. There are dozens of trees across the trail and a lot of snow left in the shady forested areas. In some places the trail is swallowed up by an amalgam of snow and downed trees. It's all fairly navigable if you keep your head up.

Lots of water still flowing down hillsides and the meadows are very wet. Some blooming just getting started. The water level at Upper Twin lake was about 10 feet higher than I've ever seen it. George Lake still had a large ice sheet on half of it. I did see an angler on the other side pull out a fish. Still a lot snow in any shaded place around George Lake.

No significant bugs to report during mid-day as I hiked, but a pair of gentlemen that stayed the night at Upper Twin reported there were "a lot."

A friend and I made a quick trip out on the Kearsarge Pass trail this weekend, with the intention of dummy checking our gear and systems since both of us have multi-week trips planned next month. Truly thrilling that BOTH of our water filters failed! Ayyy...

We got a MUCH later start than I hoped for, and while the trail was blissfully snow-free to Gilbert Lake, it was a full-on mashed potato fest not long after that. In early afternoon, the snow still had a little bit of tack to it, so it wasn't tooooo horribly slippery, but the quality degraded as the afternoon wore on, and we decided to backtrack toward Mattock Lake to camp, since there were snow-free spots in that area (though still lots of snow and LOTS of wet ground / standing pools).

The crossing between Flower & Gilbert was easy on double logs and rocks.

I carried spikes and Kahtoola K10s. The former weren't much use with the slush; I did appreciate the latter as we got above the lakes into fuller snow coverage, but there is a decent bootpack through the suncups in parts, so traction is optional depending on your comfort level on snow and condition of snow / time of day. It's sloppy out there, but relatively benign.

7/18-7/22

Route: Taboose Pass -> JMT/PCT -> SHR to SJ bridge bypass -> Piute Canyon Trail -> Piute Pass

Elevations: 4000 - 12000 feet (roughly)

Difficult section encountered on this trip:
- Lots of snow high. After early am the snow had a top layer of slush. It was well consolidated under. The slush would be more slippery/slushy as the temps rose during the day. Suncups nearly everywhere, some deep.
- Many many (more than I have ever seen before in the Sierra) avalanche debris fields. Some huge, e.g. starting on 1 side of a river/stream crossing over and destroying trees on the other side.
- A few difficult stream crossings (what I remember):
-- Taboose Creek, we did NOT cross it but hiked along the north side off trail using the old Taboose creek "trail"/route.
-- In Upper Basin, we crossed the South Fork feeder streams separately.
-- Before the Middle Fork trail junction, a feeder creek with a waterfall above. We walked upstream to cross.
-- Not an actual crossing, but a very scary spot along Piute Creek where RAGING creek (RIVER) was up to with inches of trail, lapping water on trail, clinged to rock wall to move up trail.
-- Approaching Hutchinson Meadow, creek coming from above, crossed at trail with help of downed trees.
-- Hutchinson Meadow: one braid of Pine Creek was strong.

Special equipment needed/used:
- Ice Axe (only used as trowel)
- Micro spikes (only used once for Avalanche debris field w/ consequence of sliding into raging creek).
- Trekking Poles
- Brain: lots of navigation required.

Mosquitos: Off and on mid-level.

Weather: Hot to low 50s/high 40s. 1st day we had an unforecasted T-storm with a 2-3 long periods of hail and thunder/lightning. We took shelter under boulder for the 1st (I know bad), short wait by some small trees and pitched a tent for the last.

I did a quick weekend trip up Royce Pass from Pine Creek Pass TH. There were only a couple of patches of snow before Honeymoon. Up Royce pass the #3 lake just began to melt. #2 is 1/4 melted out. I also checked Birchim lake on the way down. It's clear of ice and snow. Two creek crossing that will get your feet wet (but pretty easy, only slightly above ankle). One is at the outlet of Pine Creek lake. Don't do the stock crossing or footbridge, walk up all the way to the outlet to cross. The other one is between upper Pine Creek lake and Honeymoon.

Still quite a bit of snow above ~8200 feet but melting fast. Firm and easy to walk on.

Lots of deadfall at lower elevation.

Flowers and butterflys appeared on the way out.

Creek crossings in the area hairy at the beginning of the trip to easy at the end.

It looks like cows graze here but I'm not sure when. I would check before going and avoid overlap.

Still loads of snow mostly in the places you'd expect. North facing slopes under canopy are generally where the most remains though these conditions are not dangerous, just annoying for following the trail. North facing slopes right after passes are generally the most dangerous as a lot of switchbacks are covered so you'll need to slide down snow and bypass them.

The two snowiest areas we navigated with microspikes were right after Sonora Peak trail junction (covered with unbroken snow until 9,300 ft, patchy down to 8,600 ft) and then as you cross the border of Stanislaus & Humbolt-Toiyabe NFs. As someone with less snow experience I found these a bit sketchy so we slid where we could to get off snow.

In general, I'd say snow coverage from Sonora Pass to Hwy 4 was 30-40% of the trail, but from Hwy 4 to Echo Lake it was probably 20% or less.

The two most dangerous parts of the hike were the sketchy traverse after Hwy 4 (marked on Far Out) and then Carson Pass. We did not feel comfortable doing either without an ice axe so we bushwhacked around them. The former took ~2 hours to get around and the latter took ~45 min.

Stream crossings were generally fine but snow bridges are fast becoming unreliable. We used two on the first day to cross tributaries of the E Carson river but largely avoided them on major streams afterwards. Related to this, there is a series of snow filled ravines after Noble Lake. These snow fields have very thin bridges in parts so it's necessary to sometimes go up and traverse higher, which we found sketchy but preferable to going over bridges thinning down to a few inches.

Mosquito pressure was medium to medium-high every night except for near Lost Lakes (behind Blue Lakes.) The worst spot for bugs was the first night when we camped near the E Carson river. They didn't relent the entire night there. Oddly enough, I don't think I got a single bite at Lost Lakes though, which was a pleasant surprise.

Weather was pleasant and cooperative. Worst thing was that it got to mid 80s a few days but this was manageable. No issues with thunderstorms. Wind was pretty aggressive on high exposed areas but not noticeable elsewhere. Given the amount of snow left I didn't need to carry more than 1.5-2 liters at a time. Nearly every seasonal stream or spring is running well right now.

At 8000’ there was isolated snow patches on trail and very boggy conditions.

Creek fire scar is recovering - lots of deadfall and the trail is tough to follow in some areas from Isberg to the niche.

Beyond the niche and up through Cora lakes and parts of Stevenson and long creek trails the bark beetle damage + spot fires from the creek fire made for little-to-no shade and a very impeded trail. Lots of necessity to go off trail around massive deadfalls. Plenty of “mud postholes” off trail where you can sink to your calf.

Stevenson trail was hard to follow in some areas from disuse, burn damage, and deadfalls. Under the live tree areas was a lot of difficult snow travel - basically massive snow bumps between trees.

Hemlock crossing at NF San Joaquin is severely damaged and the bridge is unusable for sane people.

Bench canyon was thundering with water. Lots of snow in upper bench, blue lakes barely starting to thaw and rockbound lakes partially thawed. Lots of avalanche areas with heavy snow in lower bench on the south side of the creek. NF San Joaquin and Blue creek both had massive avalanches on top
Of them in a few spots with a snow bridge you could drive a semi truck over. occasionally we’d hit 8’ high “speed bumps” of snow under the trees.

Long creek use trail non-existent for 90% of the route. Occasional cairns and a few stretches of discoverable use trail.

Wildflower explosion. Enjoyed the “early season” blooms in July!