I went up to Sequoia for a couple of days. Sunday I hung out with the hordes of tourists and hiked to Tokopah Falls, went to the Sequoia Grove, and stepped up to the top of Moro Rock. Monday was noticeably quieter and was the day to hike Alta Peak. There is a nice trail that takes you the whole way up. The trail was relatively quiet with only me and one other individual summitting that day. The hike starts from Wolverton and begins with three or so miles to Panther Gap. About two miles in there is the junction to the lakes which is where most hikers go. This section is quite mellow following the ridge above Marble Fork of the Kaweah River and then following a drainage to the Gap. Here is the view looking across at Castle Rocks from the Gap.
The hike then contours around the ridge that Alta Peak is on that steeply climbs up from the Gap. On this section there was four forest employees working the trail. It was an odd place to work on the trail as there was minimal vegetation and they were working like four feet above the trail but whatever. I also met an old timer backpacker just past the trail work who had camped out at Moose Lake and he had a pretty cool story about his xcountry route from Alta Meadows. After the contour the trail splits, with one trail going down to the High Sierra Trail which looks like an epic backpack trip. The trail to Alta continues to contour through Mehten Meadows where there were two people staying. The weather had been cloudy and was getting pretty cold, I was kind of surprised as most people had mentioned this hike was hot. I only had a windbreaker so was getting worried if I was going to freeze my ass off. Approximately five miles in, you come to the final junction to Alta Meadows. From here the trail goes straight up to the peak. In the first five miles you have only climbed 1,900 feet, in the next two miles you'll be doing a little over 2,000.
Altitude started getting to me as my pace slowed noticeably and I checked out the rock spires above the trail.
The wind started picking up but fortunately most of the trail was still below the treeline. About 1/3 of the way up I met the other hiker coming down and he mentioned how cold it was at the summit, oh well. The last mile is the steepest as you wind your way through a rocky section and finally get the last push straight up the ridge to the summit. Fortunately the sun decided to peak out from the clouds and it wasn't as cold as it had been further down. You can clearly see the summit as you plod your way the last 1/4 mile. I got an altitude headache but a couple of Motrin eliminated that pretty quickly.
Finally I made it to the summit, that last two miles took almost an hour and a half. The summit register is on the top of the rock which has nice views.
There was a lot of fat marmots.
The cloud cover started to pick up again and so did the wind so after finishing my sammich. I headed down quickly taking one last picture on the way down.
The trail is mainly dirt once you get back to treeline, so you can move quite quickly. Also even the lower elevations were relatively cool so you didn't have the oppressive heat that happens when you come back down in the middle of the day. The temps were high 40s at the summit and only mid-60s at the bottom. The total stats was about 13.5 miles with 4,000 feet elevation gain in 6 hours 50 minutes.
Alta Peak
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David R
- OG of the SG
- Posts: 610
- Joined: Sun Jun 12, 2011 10:28 pm
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