Heart of the High Sierra

I stood in the U-shaped amphitheater of upper Lyell base camp, scanning the surrounding cirque for a likely path upward. Ten miles out from Yosemite National Park’s Tuolumne Meadows and into our second day on the Pacific Crest Trail, my hiking partner, Frank Berghuis, and I had ascended steadily all morning. We now viewed a scene at once spectacular and serene: pine saplings dotting an amber-green meadow; an emphatic cascade thundering down the far cliffs; in the distance, glacier-cloaked Mt. Lyell.

We rejoined the trail, which now led up the talus-strewn western side of the canyon. After 20 minutes, we gained a hanging valley closer to Lyell’s pyramidal bulk and within sight of our goal, 11,000-foot Donohue Pass. With this prize nearly in hand, we paused for lunch. This lingering and pressing on became a familiar rhythm of our 29-mile southerly route from Tuolumne Meadows to another popular Pacific Crest trail head, Agnew Meadows. Despite the route’s well-documented popularity, we discovered it’s entirely possible to find solitude on the PCT.

We’d planned last summer’s trip for the four days preceding Labor Day. Though Frank and I had been friends since high school, we’d never hiked together. Now in our early 40s and preoccupied with jobs and families, Frank and I had casually talked about reuniting for a backpacking trip together; during an early-spring conversation, the idea took root. Frank, an avid backpacker, suggested a few possible destinations but left me--the relative tenderfoot--to make the final decision. After considering ventures into remote areas of Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, I chose the more time-tested (and trodden) Pacific Crest Trail through the central Sierra.

Though our chosen route frequently skirted timberline, we reckoned the season would still offer warm days. But we had no illusions about the altitude. We bet on two factors to prepare us for scrounging oxygen from the thin air. One was the easy gradient over the route’s first nine miles, when the Pacific Coast Trail climbs a scant few hundred feet. And we figured the first night in Tuolumne Meadows Campground, Yosemite’s 9,000-foot-high gateway to the high country, would be good for acclimatizing.

Sundown that night found us clearing the last vestiges of dinner and bundling against the encroaching chill. To avoid luring one of Yosemite’s rapacious black bears, we stowed all food (and fragrant personal effects like toothpaste) in the campsite’s locker. Tuolumne is a major campground, with a store, big open-air amphitheater and bathrooms with sinks and flush toilets. Its 300-plus campsites probably were 90% taken. After a goodbye call home at a pay phone, we admired the sweep of the Milky Way overhead.

By 9 the next morning, we were on the trail. In the vicinity of Tuolumne Meadows, the PCT parallels Tioga Road (California 120) and looks more like a nature trail than a route into alpine remoteness. It crosses the Tuolumne River’s Lyell Fork on neat footbridges; the pine-fringed meadows look tame, almost domesticated. The well-grooved, multilane path suggested the high country ahead might be overrun by throngs.

Soon the trail veered south, and we entered the wide, meadowed valley of the Lyell Fork. The serpentine river plies this canyon in broad meanders. In spots, the water pools in placid reflecting ponds. Trout fingerlings dart among the rocks, and grasses fringe the curving riverbank. But a few minutes up the trail finds the river agitated, running shallow, churning white froth.

By midafternoon we came upon the first of several campsites within view of the stream. I heeded my jellied legs and hinted that nine miles was enough for the day; Frank agreed. For a while we lolled on boulders in the leaf-muted sunshine, lazing to regain strength for camp-making.

Menu planning had fallen to Frank, who took to meal preparation with gusto. Breakfasts mostly were fortified muesli cereal washed down with rich hot chocolate. We planned lunches separately; I brought simple-to-prepare combinations of crackers, canned meat spreads and that backwoods staple, M&M-laced; trail mix.

Thanks in no small part to Frank’s judicious choice of dehydrated foods and his substitution of a simple tarp for his more elaborate backpacking tent, we started out with packs weighing a comparatively light 30 to 35 pounds.

As Frank was preparing our first night’s meal, a carbohydrate-rich noodle and ground meat “goulash,” a bushy-mustachioed wrangler from a horse-packing outfit camped nearby strolled by to say hello. Jeff invited us to have coffee over at his group’s evening campfire. Later we joined Jeff’s riders, who were chatting happily and making s’mores.

In the morning we awoke to find our gear coated with frost. I winced in pain with my bare-fingered first efforts at pump-pressurizing the stove and lacing boots in the subfreezing dawn. Warm sunlight at last surged over the eastern ridge tops as we finished loading our packs and shed layers of clothing for the climb ahead.

We had taken different but equally thorough approaches to physical training (there’s no getting around the fact that backpacking can be arduous). In the weeks before, Frank completed a couple of short backpack outings and rounded out his regimen with cycling and gym workouts. I mainly pounded the roads, rising early at least four mornings a week to run; by trip time I had worked up to five hilly miles.

Twenty minutes up the trail, we began the slow ascent out of Lyell Canyon toward Donohue Pass. The roar of water echoed off the steepening mountainsides. We left the shade behind as the trail rose in long switchbacks up the head of the canyon. Pausing frequently to catch our breath, we enjoyed a bird’s-eye view of the Lyell Fork snaking through the meadow land we’d traveled the day before.

The climb over Donohue Pass rewards hikers with increasingly breathtaking vistas. Rivulets of glacier melt drain the flanks of Mt. Lyell and pool in frigid tarns before cascading over the canyon head on their way to join the Tuolumne. Fording one of these tributaries, I teetered unsteadily on slippery rocks, avoiding a full dunking only by planting a boot in the icy water.

We zigzagged the last few steps up the pass through perfectly arranged pockets of wildflowers. Topping the crest, we gaped in the direction of the craggy Ritter Range and the needle-nose Minarets, bristling against the blue sky. Around us lay an ice-blasted landscape of flattened granite debris, seemingly swept clean of all but the most stunted and tenacious vegetation. We took turns snapping triumphant photos of each other at this, the apex of our route.

As I sat replenishing my protective veneer of SPF 30, Frank disappeared over a rise to scout out two small lakes, the larger labeled only as “WL 11034T” on the topo map. He soon returned, and we agreed to make camp on some grassy spot among the granite boulders.

We traced an imaginary contour line across to the larger lake, which glinted like pewter in its desolate basin. Glancing back, I discovered that the trail, a scant 200 yards away, had disappeared amid the jumbled topography. I wondered if we could find our way back, but took comfort in the immediacy and solitude of the place.

Surprisingly, nightfall at 11,000 feet seemed balmy compared with the previous evenings’ chill lower down. I sat out, watching the sky darken, the stars blinking on one by one. The constant breeze continued into the night, ruffling the tarp. Midnight found us awake, discussing striking the shelter, when Frank exclaimed, “What was that?!” He’d seen my face suddenly illuminated by the brightest meteor display I’d ever seen. Soon after, Frank pulled down the noisy tarp; we slept soundly for the rest of the night.

With morning light, I realized that the previous day’s early halt meant today--Saturday--we needed to log serious mileage if we were to reach Agnew Meadows by noon Sunday. We began by descending into the open basin of Rush Creek, a high mountain garden of spongy green meadows accented with Indian paintbrush and lupine. Our route repeatedly crisscrossed the creek, burbling in the morning sun.

We quickly dropped once more below timberline, finally bottoming out at the base of Island Pass. Overhead, persistent cirrus veiled the sun; to the west, over the Ritter Range, darker cumulus massed menacingly. We passed hikers with fishing poles headed for Davis Lakes, then began the ascent up Island Pass. Topping it, we basked on rocks to eat a hasty lunch, replenished our water bottles and were back on the trail.

Soon, through trees, Thousand-Island Lake came into view, a highlight of this part of the PCT. When I’d day-hiked to the lake from the Mammoth area as a high-schooler, I found the spot a true alpine fairyland. Now, more than 20 years later, the setting leaped unchanged from memory. The island-dotted lake sprawls over a charming basin punctuated by winter-dwarfed pines. Past the far, southwestern shore rises the focal point of myriad nature photos: stolid Banner Peak.

Unfortunately, I arrived at the lake considerably more bushed than I had 20 years earlier. I pulled on a sweater and napped off a dizzy spell behind a shoreline clump of bushes. Then we pulled on our packs and descended from the lake basin, passing the first of perhaps 20 weary hikers nearing the end of a long holiday march into the wilderness. A downhill mile more brought us to the junction with the High Trail and the way to Agnew Pass.

An unexpected late second wind bore me unscathed over Agnew Pass. The path passed charming Summit Lake, set in a rocky, pine-fringed bowl. We trudged up a last slope to discover an inviting hollow set conveniently between low pine snags ready to accept our tarp rigging.

As we busied ourselves with erecting shelter and lighting the stove, chill westerly breezes announced the coming of heavier weather. We prepared an abbreviated dinner of pan biscuits with gravy, and cookies followed by with instant cappuccino. Then, exhausted, we ducked beneath the low tarp and dropped off to a hard-earned slumber.

By morning the impending storm had failed to materialize, leaving only gray tatters hanging to the west over Mt. Ritter. We gulped down handfuls of trail mix for breakfast. Thankfully, after the previous day’s roller-coaster tromp, the remaining eight miles leveled off below a volcanic ridge overlooking the San Joaquin River before dropping in long sweeps into the forested river canyon. Here and there the trail ducked under stands of tremulous aspen. Only a month hence, autumn would gild their still-summer-green leaves. I was disappointed at the thought of missing the show.

Gradually another realization formed: We’d just sampled a memorable fragment of the PCT but only tasted a couple of its moods, and only in its “tourist season.” In the last few steps before the Agnew Meadows trail head, Frank and I talked of other stretches we’d like to walk. And we promised each other to be planning for next summer.

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GUIDEBOOK

Pacing the PCT

Getting there: The hiking season typically runs from June to late October. Several popular Eastern Sierra trail heads access the PCT. Our start point, at Tuolumne Meadows, is seven hours north of Los Angeles on U.S. 395, to the Tioga Pass Road (California 120) entrance to Yosemite National Park. Entry fee: $20 per car. Our southern terminus, Agnew Meadows, is reached via California 203 (the Mammoth Lakes turnoff) from U.S. 395. A shuttle bus ($10 round trip), required in summer for travel past Minaret Vista, runs from the Mammoth Mountain Inn to Agnew Meadows; back-country hikers can arrange for parking at the inn.

Where to stay: Camping is available at both trail heads. Make reservations for Tuolumne Meadows ($15 per night) through the National Park Reservation Service, telephone (800) 436-PARK. Camping in the Agnew Meadows area ($12) is first come, first served. Wilderness permits (required for overnight stays along the PCT) are best reserved in advance for $3 per person. For Yosemite trail heads, contact the Yosemite Assn. Wilderness Reservation Line, tel. (209) 372-0740; for Agnew Meadows (or other Inyo National Forest trail heads), contact the Inyo National Forest Wilderness Reservation Service, tel. (888) 374-3773.

For more information: California Division of Tourism, P.O. Box 1499, Department TIA, Sacramento, CA 95812; tel. (800) GO CALIF, fax (916) 322-3402, Internet https://www.gocalif.ca.gov.

Our route is detailed in Don and Lolly Skillman’s “25 Hikes on the Pacific Crest Trail” (Stackpole Books, 1994, $17.95).