Together with a good friend I did 4 days backpacking hike, 68 miles long hiking trip at the High Sierra.
Starting our hike at Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park, and hiking from there southeast into the amazing Ansel Adams Wilderness.
We did this
hike at August 28-31, 2021.
Logistics:
Permits:
The National
Park and wilderness control the number of day-hikers getting into the
wilderness. We got Yosemite wilderness permits for 2 hikers few months in
advance where the only available starting point was at Mono Pass Trailhead, few
miles east on highway 120. The limitation of this entering point is that it
almost at the edge of the Yosemite Park, another aspect related to this
specific starting point is that you must sleep your first night outside of the
park boundaries.
https://www.sierrawild.gov/wilderness/ansel-adams/
What I took with me to the hike (a
short list):
- We are using
one tent for two hikers, sleeping bag, sleeping pad and warm cloth.
- Each of us
carry a bear canister as it mandatory in many Sierra parks and wilderness.
- Food for 5
days of hiking, unfortunately we always carry to much food with us, we need to
learn how to reduce the amount of food we are taking with us.
- I’m eating
mainly nuts mix, some power bars, beef jerky, yellow-cheese, and trail mix. I’m
not using any prepared meals, so I do not need to boil water for dinner.
- Water
filtering devices and up to 3.5 liter of water that we can carry with us if
needed. This was a dry winter, so we did not know in advance the situation with
available water, but it turned out that we had plenty of water sources along
the trails.
- Garmin Inreach
explorer+ for safety, ease of mind and emergency communication.
- I brought my
90D DSLR camera with my 18-400mm Zoom
- I was using
for the first time Alltrail app all day (download the maps in advance, I want
to measure the distance and pace as well as for navigation), brought with me a large
external battery for the phone charging (this 2,000 mA battery can probably be
good for 10 days of charging).
- Paper trail map
of the area (even when we had the Alltrail and GPS map, always take with you a
paper map).
Wildfires:
Mid / Late
summer is California notorious fire season, unfortunately we are seeing more
and more of those huge fires happening at the last few years…
At the same
time of our hike there were 2 large wildfires at the forests near lake Tahoe
(80 miles to the north). Just prior to our trip smoke cover the area, we were
concern from the air quality (had bad smoke hiking experience a year ago). Wind
coming from the east clear the smoke, so our trip was not affected from the
fires at all.
A day after we
finished our hike they close all of California forest for hikers, taking the
forest rangers and maintenance teams to help fighting the fires.
The 4 days hike map:
The Hike:
I will try to
describe our hike, day by day…. It will be challenging to convey the nature
beauty, our feeling, and emotions but I will try.
Day 1:
Start: Lyell Canyon
Trailhead, Tuolumne Meadows Wilderness Center, Yosemite
End: Alger Lakes, Ansel Adams
Wilderness
Statistics: 18 miles,
+4330ft / -2380ft
Waking up at 4am,
4 hours drive will bring us to Yosemite Tuolumne Meadows, highway 120.
We arrived at Yosemite Tuolumne Meadows Wilderness Center, we received our wilderness permit and had the short session with the ranger that explained the wilderness regulations (what to do and what not to do).
Than we parked our car at Lyell
Canyon Trailhead parking lot and finally start our hike.
We start our
hike taking the trail east parallel to the road, after 2.6 miles the trail
cross the road, here we did not find the trail junction with the trail we
planned to take. Looks like that this is unmaintained trail that is not marked
on the official map but we saw it in some web-based maps.
We progress into the
wood in the direction of the trail trying to find it, after advancing and few
zigzags we manage to find this old unmaintained trail heading east.
5.2 miles from
our starting point, we reach the Tioga pass road (highway 120) and to our
official hike starting point, Mono Pass Trailhead, as stated in our permit.
We cross the road and head south along Parker Pass Creek, this section was easy climbing for another 5.5 miles. At some point the elevation is high and trees are not growing.
The trail progress up the open landscape all the way up to Parker
pass. This is not a difficult pass to hike.
We were already
10 miles into our hike and short on water, we filled our water at the first shallow
lake at the pass and start to descend down to the other side of the pass.
The downhill trail
is passing along it way few streams and few small lakes, this valley is covered
with red color rocks.
Right after
crossing Parker Creek at the lower section, we started the 2 miles long steep
climb to Koip Peak Pass.
The trail zigzag
with many switchbacks up the mountain slop's going almost straight up for a mile
or so and only than we manage to see the mountain pass itself. This was our
most challenging hike section for the entire trip. We were tired from the early
morning wake up, doing already 13 miles of hiking and this was our first day
where our body is still not use to the hike.
We made it to
the windy mountain pass and we rested at the pass getting some protection from
the cold wind behind a small rock shelter.
After the short
rest we start to went down at the other side of the pass. Once we cross the
pass we saw, way down below, our night camping destination, Alger lakes.
We reach the
lake at around 7pm, just before sunset. We had enough daylight to find
excellent campsite near the lake and get organized for our dinner.
It was fully
dark at 8pm and we soon went to sleep, it was a good night sleep…
Additional Pictures from the same day:
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