Memorial Weekend is a great time to hit the Southern Sierra with peaks in the 7-8,000 foot range. I haven't been in this area so it was nice to hit some terrain that I haven't had an opportunity to hike. There are numerous ways to hike this peak but all require some navigational abilities as it is mainly off trail. We took the standard route from Walker Pass Campground. The first section connects to the PCT and then you head south for a 1/4 mile until you hit an obvious wash. Head upstream on this wash until you get to the first fork within another 1/4 mile and head left. The bottom of this wash starts as quite overgrown and you may want to hop out of the wash and hike on the side. This section has the worst use trail and you may question if you're in the right wash. As you get further up the wash clears up and a use trail on the bottom is evident. This area is covered with dying pinyon pines which have fallen into the wash making many sections slow. Another half-mile to 3/4 mile gets you to another fork. Both forks are covered with fallen trees and you will take the right fork with the use trail showing you the way. Now you begin to climb and the gully tightens with the use trail evident. Lots of downed trees to get around as evidence of the stresses these trees are under. There are some smaller gullies that the write-up does not mention that shoot off to the right don't follow them.
The ridge you finally get too is quite wide and covered with trees. It is almost impossible to tell where the gully begins from the top. As opposed to many HPS routes there is minimal ducks or evidence of hikers. We left a bunch of ducks in various spots at this point which were very helpful on the way back. This ridge is a toughie to follow as it moves easterly and southerly in a meandering way with much difficulty in seeing where you are trying to go. The high point is in the south east. You will follow mainly easterly and then head south over a rock outcropping which has a bunch of ducks to tell you that yes you need to clamber through that rock pile. The ridge then goes easterly does a slight jog to the north and then continues east. You then make a hard right to the south and meander through some rock piles until you get to what appears to be the highest rock point. There is no evidence that it is the high point so scramble up to the top of that rock with a third class move and there's the register.
We hit the top and cloud cover was coming in and we were getting walloped by massive winds on the top. We couldn't get the damn metal register completely closed so hopefully nothing happened to the register but it was too windy to stay up there. With the cloud cover coming in obscuring the view and graupel coming down, I wanted to head back pronto as the ridge was so difficult to navigate. Sure enough on the way back where you needed to do the jog in this case to the south we stayed on a subsidiary ridge and had to correct our navigation back to the main ridge. Fortunately the ridge is quite gentle and there was minimal penalty for getting off track. We hit the spot where I knew the gully was but couldn't find any of our ducks, after some stumbling around we finally found one and down we headed. Once in the gully the wind diminished and we had our first rest. The gully is nice and sandy and was fun coming down despite its steepness.
The rest of the way down was not eventful. The hike took four hours and fifteen minutes for eight miles of cross country hiking and 2,600 feet elevation gain. We met a PCT thru hiker who had done 20.5 miles on the PCT in 6.5 hours, that's moving it. She has already done the Appalachian, Continental Divide, and some NW trail network through Montana to Olympia National Park in Washington. She was not skipping the Sierra and was ready for that snow, awesome inspiration. We drove her to Ridgecrest as she needed some supplies and a night in a normal bed where we were staying, as there's more hiking tomorrow for both of us.
Scodie Mountain
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Girl Hiker
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