annual end of the summer backpacking trip

link to photo album

Becky and I have been wanting to visit Glacier National Park for years, but given its popularity we weren't willing to drive out there at the spur of the moment to put a backpacking trip together...so we put in all our reservations early this spring to get the exact itinerary we wanted...now all we had to do was cross our fingers that the park didn't start burning like it did in 2017.    Sad trombone...as our departure date neared, west side access was closed due to a big fire and some of our trails were shut down due to grizzly bear activity...so a trip to Glacier was going to be thoroughly compromised.  Time to find another destination.

The Sierras have never let us down, but a spur of the moment trip to California was going to be a little tricky as the most popular trailheads already had their quotas booked solid for months and we didn't want to head down there with our fingers crossed we could get a walk-up permit the day we wanted to start.   We still managed to get a reservation and piece together a wacky little loop trip zig zagging some areas we'd seen on the John Muir Trail and Sierra High Route trips years ago but we'd also get to see a lot of new terrain.

The trip reinforced just how easy it is to find solitude in the oh so popular Sierras. The few times we were on trails, particularly the Pacific Crest Trail, we'd see people about every ten minutes, but once we headed into cross country terrain, we'd go all day without seeing anyone.  

Sierras Spring Break

Spring Break in the Sierras-

Becky and I have done a couple longish backpacking trips in the Sierras, the John Muir Trail and the northern half of the Sierra High Route, but we’d never seen the range in the winter. This seemed like it this was the year to get down to California and finally do some touring, but her nursing school schedule had us limited to only a handful of days in late March. Decided four days prior to spring break that a short time in the sun in the Sierras would still be worth it, so we scrounged what info we could and barreled down there.

I think we basically spent four days skinning around mouths agape staring at the lifetime of beautiful ski runs to be had in every direction. The Dan Mingori & Nate Greenberg Backcountry Skiing Californias Eastern Sierra 2nd Edition is a fantastic guidebook. I’d also recommend getting the supplemental app (you can buy it or rent it), being new to the area, it was cool to have the routes accessible on our phone while out touring.

Road access is pretty good right now, but it’ll get better. In late April a lot more roads are plowed out so anglers can start fishing at all the high lakes. Buttermilk Rd suffered some damage this winter, you may need a 4x4 for that one, but it seems like a lot of the other roads are paved the whole way.  Rock Creek is the only snowpark in the Mammoth/Bishop vicinity, and supposedly you can buy a day pass at the snowpark, but we couldn’t find the pay station maybe its there, maybe it would be better to get a pass at the ranger station.

Watch the overnight low temps- seems like corn o clock can be as early as 9am some days. Maybe wind is less of an issue later in the spring, but wow did we have a windy day and got totally shut down on finding soft snow in the alpine on one of our tours.

We didn’t check out anything north of Mammoth- given our short amount of time, we only managed to do a tour around Convict Lake/Mini Morrison, then Bishop Bowl near North Lake, Mt.Alice out of Big Pine, and McGee, just south of Mammoth. The locals we met on McGee said some seasons it never gets enough snow to be skiable, but this year it was fat.

Wish we would’ve had a few weeks to spend down there- skiing wide open terrain into warm sagebrush valleys is a trip.

Linky to photos here