This was likely my last foray into the High Sierra for the year. As I write this, the Sierra and much of California is getting battered by the first atmospheric river of the season; snow for days, much needed rain in the lowlands, even the moss in my apartment’s parking lot has been rejuvenated. I settled on a destination I had never been to yet for this last trip — Cloud’s Rest in Yosemite.

Last year, I tried to do a late season summit bivy of Mt. Morgan South but had to bail a couple hundred feet below the summit due to deep, fresh snow from an early storm. The snow line started around 12500 ft but was consistently 5+ ft deep at the higher elevations. Better prepared this time, I slept on the summit was rewarded with both sunset and sunrise views from up high.

I’ve always wanted to do a late season trip up to Big Pine Lakes to see them when the glacial silt in the water is at its peak. I was itching to go for a hike but not feeling particularly motivated to do anything too intense so this day trip was a good compromise. The lighting this late in the season wasn’t great but otherwise this was a great trip for keeping the hiking muscles in shape!

I’ve wanted to visit this high alpine lake below Mt. Whitney since I first saw a photo of it on a trip report of the Mountaineers’ Route. I’ve already summited Whitney once via the JMT and wasn’t interested in doing the Mountaineers’ Route, but this lake definitely piqued my interest: nestled beneath the towering spires of Whitney and its sub-peaks arranged in a perfectly symmetric manner.

This somewhat esoteric peak is often overlooked in favor of its taller neighbors — Middle Palisade and Norman Clyde Peak. However, its summit offers a truly incredible view of the southern Palisades that you can’t get from many other vantage points. I wanted to photograph sunrise at the summit, which meant lugging a heavy pack with overnight gear up nearly 5000 ft of elevation gain.

I had originally planned to head up the South Fork of Big Pine Creek this weekend, but thick smoke from the Garnet Fire on the west side was creating extremely hazardous air quality conditions everywhere in the Sierra. I pivoted at the last minute and decided to check out Twenty-Lakes Basin, an area of the Sierra that’s always been on my to-do list but ends up playing second fiddle to something more exciting. I wasn’t successful in totally avoiding the smoke, but I did get to experience a pretty cool — and very accessible — corner of the Sierra. My plan was to summit Shepherd Crest, a 12000-ft peak overlooking North Peak, and camp somewhere in its vicinity.

It felt like I had angered the gods. I had been looking forward to this hike all summer but instead of watching the sunset from one of my favorite places in the Sierra, I was hunkered down at 12,000 ft above sea level, praying that the dozens of lightning strikes overhead wouldn’t strike my tent. Weather in the Sierra Nevada isn’t as fickle as some might have you think, but when storms are in the forecast it can be hard to tell whether they materialize as just ominous clouds or something more.

It’s been a while since I’ve made an update about hiking trips, so I figured it best to start with a short one. I wanted to return to the Haeckel Col area for some astrophotography after passing through with my friend Paulina on our Ionian Basin trip. My plan was to camp somewhere on the ridge between Hungry Packer Lake and Midnight Lake and photograph the Milky Way over Picture Peak.

The hardest single day push I’ve done in the Sierra yet, featuring a heat wave, wildfire smoke, and caloric-deficit-induced altitude sickness. I’ve been getting out into the High Sierra more weekends than not this summer, gradually tackling harder and harder trips, and with that came the (mostly-justified) confidence that I could handle 12 miles and 4900 ft of elevation gain with a heavy pack. My plan was to take my overnight gear as close to the summit of Mt. Davis as possible and photograph both sunrise and sunset.

A return to one of my favorite places in the Sierra. Last winter in the throes of trip planning, I managed to convince my friend Paulina to join me for a 5-day loop hike through Ionian Basin. We planned to enter via Echo Col and exit via Haeckel Col, starting and ending at Lake Sabrina to avoid any need for hitchhiking or car shuttling.

I hiked up to Pt. 12,668 for sunrise last year and it was the best sunrise view I’d seen in the Sierra so far. This summer, I vowed to go back and camp high up on the ridgeline connecting Cloudripper and Sky Haven. I had excellent weather, slept under the light of the full moon with panoramic views of the Palisades, and woke up to watch the first rays of light hit the Sierra.

I didn’t want to do an extended trip over the holiday weekend so I instead set a lofty goal for a quick overnight trip to Volcanic Ridge. I first visited this place in 2018 where I missed sunrise from the summit by half an hour. I had come back last summer to properly catch the sunrise but extraordinarily high winds in excess of 50 mph forced me to abandon my summit bid. This year, despite more windy weather, I was finally able to not just catch the summit sunrise but also photograph the Milky Way.

Pioneer Basin is place that’s been on my hiking to-do list for a few years now. It usually gets put on the back burner when I start thinking about how one has to drop 2000 ft into this basin and then regain it on the hike out. This month, though, I’ve been trying to slowly ramp up the difficulty of my backpacking trips in preparation for a much harder trip at the end of July, and Pioneer Basin definitely fit the bill, clocking in at a roundtrip 18.5 miles and 4600 ft of gain.

I’ve been to Hungry Packer Lake once before – in August 2023 the week after Hurricane Hillary brought unprecedented summer rains to California. The weather was still unsettled at this time and my trip was marked by freezing temperatures and heavy rain. This time, I was much more fortunate to experience one of my favorite lake basins in the Sierra in perfect weather.

My first real backpacking trip of the season was an easy one. The snow was still clinging to the peaks, the crowds mostly kept to greener pastures, and my lungs protested their re-introduction to sleeping about 10,000 ft.

I usually only post duplicate trip reports when the second trip has an interesting feature missing from the prior report. In truth, this was a very last minute trip with the only goal being astrophotography. I had tried to capture the Milky Way above Bear Creek Spire last September, but it was too late in the year and I had brought the wrong lens. This time, armed with much more technical skills, I was successful.

This is a pretty short post just detailing my experiences using a star tracker for the first time.

I heard of Eagle Tower for the first time this winter when some descending hikers told me they were coming from Eagle Tower. Not knowing there was a difference between Eagle Tower and the eponymous peak (my real destination that day), I naively told them “oh, me too!” After that day, I did some research on Eagle Tower but largely put it out of mind. This spring, my friend Ngan and I were planning to spend a relaxed day in Yosemite Valley to do some photography but we both realized we’d probably be pretty bored by the afternoon without some hiking thrown into the mix. One thing lead to another and we had settled on a day hike to Eagle Tower before watching sunset at the newly reopened Glacier Point.

For a few days each year, Glacier Point Road in Yosemite opens only to cyclists just before it reopens to cars. I’m by no means a cyclist and haven’t ridden a bike in the better part of a decade, but my friend Paulina convinced me to do this ride with her by lending me her e-bike. We had the entire road to ourselves at sunset and ate dinner under the stars and moon

I was due for a monthly conditioning hike and chose to go up the Mist Trail and JMT up to Panorama Point since I had never been up that way before, not even to Vernal and Nevada Falls. My real aim was an unnamed 7007-ft summit above Panorama Point which I had hoped would have good views of the surrounding area.