Baddest Trail?

[Buck Forester]

Snow Nymph®, when you say Marion Lake, I'm assuming you mean Merriam Lake? I'd hafta look at my Secor book to see what the 'name' of this pass is, but I don't think it's Feather Pass, but I could be wrong. From what I gather, Feather Pass connects Merriam Lake basin with Bear Lakes Basin (south of Feather Peak), and this pass I'm talking about is the next pass north of there and connects Bear Lakes Basin directly with the uppermost Royce Lake (north of Feather Peak). I've even seen mountain lion tracks over that sucker. I've taken lots of little passes in the area... there's a cool pass that connects one of the lower Royce Lakes to Merriam Lake too. Merriam Lake is awesome! It has a tropical sand beach even.

[BSquared]

My vote is for Lamarck Col from the Evolution side, though I confess that I did this a looong time ago. For me, the big problem was finding the damn pass! We'd hiked up from Darwin Basin, were really beat because of the altitude, and it seemed like we investigated dozens (at least two ) of potential "passes" before we finally found the actual col. I've never been so discouraged and tired in my life.

[Skibum]

I'd say Taboose as well. Hot, sandy and steep. Great view from the pass though.

[wingding]

Having done Shepherd Pass 3 times I think it's time to try Taboose. I'm going to head up it 4th of July weekend, and then check out Bench Lake and head north to give Split Mountain a try - I guess I'll take 5 or 6 days.

I don't like Cottonwood Pass - an easy pass, but soooo boring. I went over Cottonwood Pass last August and headed north to Miter Basin. Once I got to Soldier Lakes I started to enjoy the trip, but south of there it was hot, dry, and sandy. On the way out I went over Old Army Pass - nicer than Cottonwood Pass, but still hot and dry in August.

[SSSdave]

It wouldn't be fair to include pristene off trail routes as they can be as hard as one is able to cope with. But there are some well used off trail routes like Lamarck Col mentioned above that are in yet another category. Two of those "common routes" I'd add are the route from Glen Aulin up to Mattie Lake. Steep granite slab friction climbs with intervening bushwhacking through dense brush that is often painful manzanita. Then after topping out one needs to avoid the downstream mosquito ridden swamps below Mattie. Another well used route that is a pain would be Alpine Col up past Goethe Lake. Huge huge talus and often steep and unstable as in rock glaciers. Generally I find large talus is the most tedious and dangerous Sierra terrain to navigate through with a large pack.

...David

[Snow Nymph]

Yes, I meant Merriam Lake We spent a few hours on that beach. Water was cold!

I was looking at your photo looking down at the lakes. I guess that's the view we saw from Feather Peak.
Your pass is to the right of this photo from Feather Peak (not in the picture, but we saw it and it was steep!)




http://community.webshots.com/photo/462 ... 6560Bfnhno


Here's a view of the ridge from Julius Ceasar



http://community.webshots.com/photo/467 ... 6560IyjznG

[Trekker]

Well, I'm too smart (chicken) to intentionally try something that's too hard for my meager aerobic conditioning, but for me a few short segments come to mind from various trips, not counting situations where I was dead tired to begin with. My first backcountry trip ever, to Merced Lake; the first half mile or so out of Little Yosemite Valley is like hiking on the beach, compounded of course by a rookie's too heavy a pack. Hiking up to Lamark Col from Lamark Lakes and finding that the snow field ended some 20 ft below the col (NOT what I was expecting based on pictures and reports-a dry year!) having to scramble up talus instead to the top of Mt. Lamarck and then come down at night. And then Dusy Basin to Palisade basin, on my first solo ever, when I decided not to go down to Dusy lakes and then climb up the drainage to Knapsack Pass but instead to cut straight through the brush, and I mean STRAIGHT through, and pick my way through the LARGE talus at the bottom of slopes surrounding Knapsack, almost getting my Kelty Tioga external hung up between two boulders, which would have left me in a fairly precarious position, an object lesson that the easiest-looking route on a topo doesn't always turn out that way.

[Rosabella]

Living in Washington State now I only get down to the Sierra about once a year for backpacking, so I haven't done some of the trails mentioned above, but... when you mentioned "death march" the first thing that came to my mind was my day hike up Mt. Whitney on the Main Trail.

I brought my CD player, and when I got to the switchbacks I started listening to "Phanton of the Opera"... what a high! The music was so beautiful... the mountain was so beautiful... that I got caught up in it and was not as diligent as I should have been about drinking water. By the time I got to the top I was starting to have a bit of an altitude thing going. It was my own fault, and I learned a lesson from that.

The death march was coming down. (Oh, my poor knees! ) After that I got hiking poles.

[SSSdave]

...Your pass is to the right of this photo from Feather Peak (not in the picture, but we saw it and it was steep!)

On our summer 2004 Bear Creek trip, three of us climbed up from camp at the end of the day to the 12k ridge directly opposite the Feather Peak pinnacle ridge. That was to shoot the alpenglow on the ridge which we did. The following is a picture of Buck's pass. Buck can comment on which side of the castle in the center of the notch he descended. I'm guessing the south notch. Not knowing better it looks class 3 on the map and by the photo. Note I have a trip planned back into the EFBC basin but plan to pass through the lower notch from Granite Park to Black Bear Lake.

...David

[Buck Forester]

Yep, that looks like the one! I remember the "castle" like structure in the middle of the 'pass'. Hopefully I can make it over there again this summer. I've been fortunate to be selling lots of images and maybe I can give a shot at doing it full-time in a few months... that would be a dream!