As always the full report with more words and photos is here: https://badmountain.org/bear-lakes-excellence
The Pine Creek drainage hosts one of the few extant mines in the Sierra.
Yesterday's snow clung temporarily to northern faces.
We were hiking by 1:30 and at Honeymoon Lake by 5 PM.
The Sierra is so unbelievable that this exceptional mountain doesn’t even have a name. We demand respect for Peak 12,245!
The evening came on fast and soon we were in our tents. We both felt that this was the coldest night of the trip.
We were hiking by 7:45 AM the next morning. The forest west of Honeymoon is beautiful, but soon enough we popped out into the open and took a long break for breakfast.
For those keeping tabs on highly specific Sierra details, this is the state of the Granite Bear Pass snowfield on September 21, 2024, an exactly average snow year.
Looking back.
We paused briefly at the top of Italy Pass before heading toward the low point above the smile of snow: Dancing Bear Pass. We followed internet wisdom to drop lower than you’d expect, and had a relatively easy time traversing between the two passes. Eventually we hit some larger talus, but there was nothing particularly memorable in this world of endless rock.
White Bear Lake greeted us on the far side of the pass.
Love this lake.
We stopped for an hour, then skirted around the west side of the lake and dropped down into a glorious, gnarly landscape. It was unexpectedly hard to figure out what we were looking at versus the topo in this moment – but somehow we persevered, and it was easy walking.
The west end of Big Bear Lake seemed a little low and sad, but Little Bear Lake just to the west was one of the highlights of the day: surprisingly cute and protected by 11,400 foot standards.
We went around the southeast side of Little Bear (the northwest looked impassable or at least unpleasant) and continued the glorious, easy walking through little meadows and tiny cresting “passes.” Eventually we were looking down on the main event, Vee Lake. We found a relatively protected spot from the afternoon wind. It was early, so we dozed and wandered around for hours. I’d like to come back sometime earlier in the season, as the grass and tundra were looking a bit yellow and dried out.
Clouds were building, despite the rain-free forecast. It’s rare to see this kind of light in the Sierra without an hour or three cowering in a tent at some point. Lucky us.
A little bit softer now.
Neither of us slept well, so we took a slow morning and weren’t out of camp until 9 AM. The walking was easy until the insignificant-looking hill below Den Lake. This steep, sandy hill was a beast for some reason.
Den Lake isn't much to write home about, though this photo might be!
From Den, we picked out a line: climb the grassy ramp at the northeast end of the lake (around the word “Lake” on the USGS topo), and then cut south across what looked like a long, easy ramp system. This ended up working well. The talus on the whole trip was surprisingly stable.
We soon hit a gully where we turned left and started climbing for real. Eventually we reached a broad flat spot before the final climb to Feather Lite Pass. It seemed obvious to climb the steep, gravelly sand on the left and cut across near the top to the pass itself. On the way up, we saw a few sets of deep, sandy footprints that had the same idea.
There is very little written about Feather Lite. Most everyone takes Feather, since it’s on Roper’s High Route. For the record: I really liked this pass (especially in this direction).
Once through the doorway of the pass, we were presented with another of the many glorious views in these mountains.
A steep, sandy chute descends directly off the pass, almost like a trail off the pass itself. It was impossible to miss from above. We pseudo-skied our way down, avoiding the biggest boulders.
Soon we hit the prominent flat spot you can easily see in the previous photo. You could fit a bunch of tents here, if for some odd reason you wanted to do that. The chute we had taken is readable from down here, but surprisingly less obvious than from the pass. I would definitely try to locate it before heading up from this direction.
We took a steep, grassy chute down to the lake that went fine but was actually a bit annoying. The late season grass had grown tall and blown over, which made rock faces surprisingly slippery underfoot. (One of us tripped and fell here.)
But soon enough we were at La Salle Lake. We negotiated a bit of talus and then were on our way down the drainage.
Photo of the trip!
The use trail down to Merriam Lake is on the east side of the creek, and went fine. I wonder how easy it is to find from below. We paused at Merriam for an hour.
We followed and then lost the use trail to French Canyon. We ended up too far south along the plateau below Merriam, but it was all good and beautiful walking any which way you went.
We bushwacked back to the main trail just as it plunges down the canyon wall. It got quite steep closer to the bottom, where we ran into a group heading up to the lake, the first people we’d seen in a while.
We plodded up the French Canyon trail for a mile and a half before steering ourselves up to Elba Lake on a decent cross country line, starting maybe a tenth of a mile south of the lake’s outlet. The lake itself looked a bit late-season low, and there was quite a lot of horse poop in spots.
The area around the lake’s outlet was nice and we found a glorious spot tucked into a copse of trees, sheltered and cozy but with the vast Sierra just beyond.
We watched the clouds throw light around.
We started our post-dinner walk a bit late, and the clouds were already aflame. It was another great day.
We had tons of condensation overnight again. We left Elba and walked the use trail to Moon and L Lakes, with Moon appearing to be the most attractive of the three.
The use trail died off at L Lake, but it was smooth sailing on open meadow and boulders until we dropped below French Lake and climbed back up the other side. French Lake is nice. Too large and exposed for me to fall in love, but gorgeous and clear and very deep.
We worked around the south shore, which rises quickly off the lake, and contoured around the head of French Canyon for one last view before meeting the trail at Pine Creek Pass.
We motored down the trail and made it to the car by 2 PM. We had somehow left both front windows open. How!? Fortunately no weather, animal, or other interested party had taken advantage of the situation over the last four days.
This was a late season trip to one of the perfect corners of the Sierra, with great weather and no smoke. Lucky! I’d recommend this route to anybody. You could also switch it up: perhaps use Granite Bear (after the snowfield has shrunk a bit) to get into Bear Lakes Basin more quickly than we were able to via Italy/Dancing Bear. The Italy Pass area was not a highlight for me, so skipping it wouldn't make a worse trip to my eyes. To exit Bear Lakes, you could use Feather instead of Feather Lite, or even BeaRoyce and explore Royce Lakes instead of the Merriam Lake zone.
