Kearsarge Pass

The toughest backpacking trip of my life—and one of the absolute best, for many reasons.

A couple of friends (Bob and Mike) joined me on a backpacking trip to resupply Joshua, Paul, and Sonia on their JMT through-hike. We ventured from Onion Valley (west of Independence) over Kearsarge Pass and down to Charlotte Lake.

The terrain is rugged. The eastern slope of the Sierra seemingly goes nearly straight up. Much of it is bereft of tress and shrubs (just occasional small wildflowers). It is stunningly beautiful.

It's beyond beautiful, really, sometimes beyond description. Especially if backpacking (but even if "just" hiking), you work so hard to get to the pass that, once there, the view seems enhanced, beyond description, like a visual endorphin high. Along the way, besides just the challenge of getting to the pass, there's the challenge of simply being there: observing, being part of the surroundings and not just someone passing through, appreciating the variety and the changes and the flats and the ups and the water and the granite and the myriad different kinds of pines and the ferns and the flowers and the sky.

Then, you reach the pass. You look out to the west, where you're going, and see a lake-strewn basin stretching down down down, with a lovely valley in a granitic bowl, a scant few small glaciers remaining on the shadowed northern faces. You look back east down the mountain, really, though, over the down-the-mountain into the valley, and across the Owens Valley, and you marvel at the steep slopes of the eastern Sierra, far steeper here, near Whitney, than in the north near Donner Summit.

You shake your head rather like a puppy after a bath, and you pinch yourself, because it's hard to believe it's real, and you're there, and you've made it up to the pass. And you thank whatever you think you should thank—your inner self, nature, God, some nondescript higher power, the universe, the power within that leads to self-fulfillment—because the experience, the whole thing, is just that exceptional, and just the completely different from the mundane of typical daily life.

Time for some details.

The hike from Onion Valley trailhead to Kearsarge Pass is about 4.7 miles. The trail starts at 9,185', and switches back (and forth and back and forth) almost continuously to 11,845'. The few spots that aren't switchbacks are those along the lakes (Pothole Lake, Gilbert Lake, and Flower Lake; the trail is well above Heart Lake and Big Pothole Lake). It's brutal hike, with an average 10.7% gradient. On the western side of the pass, you lose 1,045' in 2.6 miles (7.6% average gradient, but there's lots of trail that nicely follows the contour lines, meaning the steep stuff is more like 10-11%), then travels another mile down to Charlotte Lake at 10,370' (average 7.4% gradient).

4.7 miles and 2700' up, 3.7 miles and 1500' down. Ouch.

But, absolutely worth it.

The scenery started out lovely, and just kept getting better. Merely the sunset from Onion Valley on Monday evening was magnificent. The view from Kearsarge Pass is breathtaking: stark and lush at the same time as you look to the west, inviting in the distance, a tad foreboding 'til you get there!

As tough as it was, yes, I'd go back again, even if I wasn't bringing a bunch of needed supplies in to a JMT trekking crew.