High Sierra Topix

We took a fantastic father/son 6 day backpack from Agnew Meadows to Tuolumne Meadows July 19-25, 2006. We also car camped before and after the trip at Pumice Campground on the Red's Meadow Road. Here are links to our trip reports. We had a lot of fun making them. We hope you will read them and check out the photos. We want to THANK all the people on the highsierratopix that helped us SO much by answering questions, providing great advice and sharing your experience. You guys are FANTASTIC! We hope that these trip reports will inspire and help someone else to experience the wilderness.


Backpacking Page:
https://spark.adobe.com/page/FdVlXFfjLaSEi/

Camping Page:
https://spark.adobe.com/page/ae6Kh10lWZgYF/

Cool trip report. That is a great format.

Great trip report! Well done, love the details. Maybe you can get GPS on your phone?

Hi TonyDavid,

Loved the TR - especially the photos. I normally can't get those sunrise photos because I can't get up that early! Not a morning person!

I was glad to see all the wildflowers by the tarns on the bench east of Donohue Pass. When I was there in mid-August (many years ago) it had few flowers. July is better for wildflowers, but I'm a bit of a wimp regarding the mosquitos that come with them.

-Phil

Phil…We really appreciated your tip about camping at the tarns. It was a special experience. There were only about 4 with water and they were about ½ full - enough to wash off in and get our water. The wildflowers were pretty. We did have some bugs in the evening. Thanks again for the tip and the map!

Read through your complete Adobe Spark feature. Nicely crafted, an entertaining read. Thanks for the presentation.

That 14.5" rainbow has the obvious look of a plant. Mammoth region does regularly plant large catchables.

On your Ediza map typo "MT RIDDER". Your mileage shows 7.39 miles that is a couple miles longer than is usually measured.

http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOC ... 412620.pdf

So was that the result of a GPS tracking device? Not a few have issues with accurate mileage. A quick look at your other mileages also seemed long?

Your Garnet camp spot on the lake's northern peninsula is a well known large equestrian camp zone. There is an actual major horse trail not shown on the topo from the south side of 1000 Island that routes over the ridge.

SSSdave…thanks so much for your note and for your careful read of our report.

Yes, thanks for confirmation that that large trout is a plant….I suspected that. Nevertheless it was quite a thrill for my 13 year old to pull that one in. Thanks for catching Ridder typo. We used Caltopo to trace the mileages so they are not actual and may be inaccurate. That's interesting that the Garnet camping location is equestrian camp. Glad there were no horses or evidence of horses around. The only other people on peninsula were a couple of people that we directed to it who were a little confused on where to camp late in the day. I had heard there was a user trail from Garnet to Thousand over ridge. We were tempted to try it but were not sure about it. Really appreciate your comments!

I had heard there was a user trail from Garnet to Thousand over ridge. We were tempted to try it but were not sure about it.

Garnet Pass is an easy Class 1 pass, very easy, the western end of Garnet is sub-lime in early-mid July during wildflower season.

Tonydavid wrote:SSSdave…thanks... I had heard there was a user trail from Garnet to Thousand over ridge. We were tempted to try it but were not sure about it. Really appreciate your comments!

The horse trail is quite visible on the satellite map. It starts just north of Emerald Lake at these display center crosshairs:

http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=37.72525,-119.16850&z=19&t=H

And is easily followed moving the map position along until it gets into denser forest on the Garnet side of the ridge, though I was still able to follow it to the lake as it popped in and out of the pines. At ground level once on the trail it is very obvious because years of horse hooves leave a well dug out trail and does not look at all look like many hikers ever use it. A backpacker like this person would however just ramble crosscountry because everywhere on that ridge is class 1.