High Sierra Topix

Thanks for letting us vicariously come along on your grand adventure.
-Phil

Brrr!!! You are tougher than me! That much snow at Colby Lake would have sent me out the trail. I may have missed it, but how did you come out? Not surprised you saw nobody- who in their right mind would be those places in new snow?

A great route, but I think I would do it mid-summer. In my younger years I would do such stuff without a thought. But then, I have become a real fair-weather backpacker over the years. But, it was a great "vicarious" experience! Thanks for the report.

Thanks for the comments. In truth, it just wasn't that cold. There was no real wind, and only the clear nights were at all cold, and certainly not in my 5 degree bag. I made the mistake of thinking it was cold, and wearing a wooly shirt on my way up to K Gap, and by 9:30 I was stuck- had take it off and wear nothing up to the pass.
WD, to answer your question, I made the long walk out from Hamilton Lake to Wolverton via the H.S. Trail, and Panther Gap. I would have stayed longer, but I'd already stretched 8 days into 11.*

*11 day includes the first trip with Lizzie and friends to Moose Lake- I left on this trip from Moose Lk. with just 5 days of food and fuel. (lost 10 lbs. )

Beautiful photography--I enjoyed your windows into an enchanting place. I think I camped very near your Valhalla camp. A little downstream from upper Hamilton Lake and above lower Hamilton Lake? What a gorgeous place.

Beautiful photos, and great write up. Thanks for sharing!

What a great trip report and fabulous photos! Having some skill and being there at the right time and place certainly shows. I missed the Copper Mine trail completely when I was in the area but it shows up perfectly well now with a dusting of snow. Go figure... ;-) Beautiful job and thanks!

I also greatly appreciated being able to vicariously experience your adventure. Thanks for sharing.

Wow! Coppermine Pass is high on the list for me. Hopefully in 2019 some time.

Wow quite the adventure to do in fall. Beautiful fall scenery. I was wondering, how did you descend from Josephine to Cloud Cyn? That was the most extreme part of my 2002 visit to the area that me and my friends have called "Mordor I"--you can imagine what the Kaweahs would look like with the sky brown with intense smoke from nearby fires. Speaking of Valhalla, I'm so old school that every time I've been there and gazed up at the famed Angel Wings, the Ring of the Nibelungen Walhalla motif of Wagner is playing in my head---usually in its "final" form in the operatic cycle (when several of the motifs alternate at the end of Brunhilde Immolation scene that closes the cycle).

giantbrookie writes:

Wow quite the adventure to do in fall. Beautiful fall scenery. I was wondering, how did you descend from Josephine to Cloud Cyn? That was the most extreme part of my 2002 visit to the area that me and my friends have called "Mordor I"....

I descended with great difficulty. I thought I recalled cgunderson recommending a thin corridor following the outlet creek of Josephine. So I began to the left of the outlet, and soon was shut down. I dropped my pack and climbed a bit to look for a better route, and saw what looked like a very promising path to the far left, (north) but when I climbed up around the slabs that led to it, I found that it had sketchy steep slabs at the top. Everything was wet and getting wetter in the light rain, so I headed down to the other side of the basin, thinking that perhaps gunderson's wording had been: "...a thin pathway along the outlet stream of the lower lake, that is, the lower of the 2 small lakes to the east of Jo Lk. The map contours make that path look pretty good. I went that way, and made it work by staying just left of outlet channel-But, it was not easy! Check out the steepness in the photo below:
Note the dull-yellowish circle in the middle right near the bottom of the frame, that's not a pot of gold, it's muddy wet grass on the floor of Cloud Canyon.