We’re off on the Sierra High Route! It will take us about 200 miles from South to North across the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It’s called a “Route” instead of a trail because it’s not a trail at all. There’s a series of landmarks that we’ll connect by finding the most navigable path between them. This has been a bucket-list trip for us since 2023, when we intended to hike it but deep snow that lasted late into the summer kept us off.
SHR Day 1: 9.3 Miles, 5,580 ft ascent
We arrived at Road’s End Ranger Station late last night and slept in our car so we could get an early start. That didn’t happen. We slept in, took our time with final preparations, and finally got started at about noon. Speaking of our car, when we finish this trip we have no idea how we’ll get back to pick it up, but we’ll figure something out. (No shuttles go to the trailhead, so it will probably be either hitchhiking or a combination of hitchhiking, public transit and/or renting a car to drive ourselves back to Kings Canyon).
The trail today just went up, up, up. We’ve both been getting elevation sickness above 10,000 ft lately (we’re not well-acclimated this season), so we took every precaution we could think of to fend it off. We did a short distance, we drank lots of water, had plenty of electrolytes, ate a lot, and took several breaks. It went well! I am symptom-free, and Renee’s case is much less than when we spent a night at below 10,000 feet two weeks ago. That’s good, because from here we’ll continue to climb!
We saw a rattlesnake right away, and about five miles later a friendly black bear came moseying down the trail. He sat near the trail looking for food for a long time, so we eventually decided to pass closer than we usually would. He just watched as we walked by.
We left trails for the first time right before finding a nice campsite by a lake at the base of a pass that we’ll be scrambling up tomorrow. For dinner we had pumpkin curry soup. Yum! -T
SHR Day 2 – 13 mi, 4,032 ft ascent
It rained a bit overnight, but we both woke up feeling pretty good. It seems like our hydration plan yesterday worked because we both had minimum elevation sickness! We went over 3 passes today—all at just over 11,000 ft and all off trail. We weren’t exactly sure what to expect being off trail, but it went surprisingly well! We were either on rocks above the trees, or when we were in the trees, the landscape is so dry that the walking was easy (no bushwhacking like we had in Washington on the Pacific Northwest Circuit). One of the passes had some big rocks on the descent which were a bit challenging. I was a bit nervous and needed Tim’s help getting down a big rock once (I had to take off my pack, put my hand on his shoulder, and do a big jump). We were only on a trail for about 2-3 miles today, but even that trail was clearly not used often and hard to follow at times. The weather was overcast all day, which was great. Yesterday was hot! The are tons of wildflowers in bloom right now—so many beautiful colors (pink, purple, yellow, orange). The mosquitoes were pretty bad whenever we were near water, especially in the meadows. We decided to camp up high away from water to avoid them.
Saw two SHR hikers right before camp, a marmot in the morning at camp, and three big bucks in a meadow. -R
SHR Day 3 – 9.6 Miles, 3,611 ft ascent
Wow. Neither of us realized today would be as hard as it was. We thought we would cross over five mountain passes, but we only did three and they drained us! The first two were fine. The third was “Frozen Lakes Pass”. It was at 12,321 feet, but elevation wasn’t the hard part — boulders were! We scaled a wall of big boulders to get up and descended what seemed like endless boulders to get down. It was HARD WORK. It turns out I’m a little more confident with my footing on boulders than Renee is so I taught her some of my techniques. In the evening we made it to an intersection between our route and the Pacific Crest Trail / John Muir Trail, and we get to follow the trail for the next ~6 miles. That will be a welcome change of pace! Hopefully when we head back off-trail things will go more smoothly than they did today! We set up camp at ~11,400 ft at the base of Mather Pass, with towering peaks above us in 3 directions and an endless expanse of mountains opening up in the fourth. It’s pretty. The mosquitos are crazy down low and near water, but when we camp high and dry it’s basically mosquito-free. For dinner we had chili mac. Yum! -T
PS: We’re about to release a brand new line of cookware with a watertight lid! It’s perfect for cooking, cold soaking, and simple dish-doing on the trail! See it in action and sign up for the waitlist to get it first!
Yay! A new adventure! Thank you for sharing the pics and story.