Pioneer Basin – June 28-29, 2025
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 leaving the Bay Area on Fridays for the mountains much later this summer, meaning that I’ve also been going to sleep and waking much later on Saturday mornings. This trip started much later than usual and I didn’t hit the trail until around 8 AM. The ascent up to Mono Pass offered little shade, but what it lacked in __ it more than made up for in views of the entire Little Lakes Valley from a different perspective. Before I knew it, I was at Ruby Lake and then making the final push up and over the pass. I took a long break at Summit Lake and said hi to a couple with two dogs who passed me earlier and whom I would later leapfrog multiple times on the trail.
The descent down to Fourth Recess was scenic but depressing knowing I’d have to regain all of that elevation the next morning. Once I got below the treeline, storm clouds started to move in and I could hear thunder in the distance. At this point, I hurried up the Pioneer Basin trail and quickly set up a suitable camp on the far side of the lowest lake under increasingly bad mosquito swarms.
Pioneer Basin after a parting storm in the distance.
I was a bit wiped from the hike in and slept for a couple of hours in my tent under a light drizzle. The storm clouds over Mono Pass began to subside and I got out my camera and tripod. Since the peaks in the distance were oriented in a nearly east-west direction, I wasn’t sure whether sunrise or sunset would have the best lighting and resolved to be ready for both.
The sunset ended up being the most spectacular. Lush green meadows dotted by wildflowers, snow-capped peaks in the distance, birds chirping in the trees, and smooth lake reflections only broken up by fish breaking the surface to feed on mosquitoes. I set up my camera for some blue hour photos before turning in for the night and resolving to wake up at midnight for some coveted Milky Way shots. The new Lorde album helped me get through the eeriness of a still night in complete darkness with no one else camped in the basin. Somehow, despite completely bungling the direction I’d be shooting in in my planning, I think I managed to take a successful shot on this night.
Pioneer Basin at sunset.
In the morning, I waited around for sunrise but quickly realized that many of the peaks actually don’t receive sunrise light due to the higher peaks to the east. I wanted to crawl back into my sleeping bag for a few more hours but knew I had a long day ahead of me so I made breakfast and slowly packed up. I ran into a group of five coming from Silver Pass on the JMT, and then near Trail Lakes the couple with the dogs from the day prior. They told me their dogs started to tire out halfway down to Fourth Recess so they went back to Trail Lakes and called it a day instead of continuing on to Pioneer Basin.
Mono Pass was windier on the second day and I lost the trail through a snowfield, resulting in some unpleasant navigation through thigh-deep sun cups. The only thing of note on the descent was that the Little Lakes Valley side of Mono Pass has next to no shade almost anywhere. I didn’t hydrate well enough nor did I eat enough food and that combined with the heat put me in a bad state by the time I got back to the car. I had to take a Dramamine to stave off the nausea although I think I would have been fine after waiting it out.
Overall, this was an excellent trip to a really unique part of the Sierra. Being that I mostly stick to the eastern Sierra, it’s not often that I get to see such lush meadows where grass completely reigns over granite. I’m very glad to have finally visited this special place.
—Justin
