High Sierra Topix

Hi Q,
If you're serious about the lakes on the South side of the Glacier Divide, let me know, as my wife and I went through there last year. We went in over Piute to Ramona Lake and looped around the far end of Glacier Divide and then traversed on the South side of the divide back to Darwin bench before heading into Ionian Basin. My TR from last year has some photos of the area (compromised by the smoke from the fires that were burning in northern CA at the time), but if you want other shots, I can dig some out. Also, another TR was logged last summer about a trip over Snow Tongue pass, and it had some great shots later in the season, and Moosetracks posted a ton of photos from a climb of the Hermit. In a nutshell, the traverse from Darwin bench to the basin south of Snow Tongue is very straightforward and the huge lake below the pass has plenty of spots to camp. We camped by the lakes further east, and as you can imagine, the views out toward Evolution Basin, Mt. Goddard and the McGee Lakes area are magnificent.
CG

Thanks CG! I'll take a look for those past TRs. After picking everyone's brain about the west side, I think Darwin Basin is the trip I'll do after all.

Thanks for the reply and the pic. Snowshoes are definitely out! However, that looks like it would be fun to attempt with axe and crampons.

If you do go back to the west side, last week I did the Emerald/Pear lake-Tablelands (moose lake)-Alta meadows loop suggested by an earlier poster (with lots of help/suggestions from this board-- thanks, we had a great time!). It was snow free except for maybe 3-4 sections of <100 feet on flat ground that could be bypassed if you want-- basically no big deal. We did essentially the minimum distance (day one- to emerald lake, few hours; day 2 up and over past moose lake-- about 8 hours at a very slow pace with swim stops; day three-- out via alta, maybe 4 hours). With more energy and longer days, you could explore well into the table lands without snow in three days. Once we left the established trails, we saw no one, but it was mid-week. the only drawback was heavy mosquitos at emerald and pear lakes.

as an aside, below the emerald lake area, in the broad valley above Tokopah falls, I saw some kind of cable/wire strung over the river between stands on either bank. Does anyone know what this is?

-adam

Adam, most likely that used to have some sort of cart hanging from it and hydrologists would go out over the river and measure water flow etc. There was a cool one for years on the Mineral King king road that we used to ride across on. they eventually took the cart away but the cable remains.

mountaineer wrote:Adam, most likely that used to have some sort of cart hanging from it and hydrologists would go out over the river and measure water flow etc. There was a cool one for years on the Mineral King king road that we used to ride across on. they eventually took the cart away but the cable remains.

bingo.