Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Cross country bet Lk Reflection & Lk S. America ?

Already planning for next year! Any suggestions for cross country from Lk Reflection to Lk. South America? or is it better from East Lk to Lk SA? We are planning to start from Road's end, cross the range at one of the points and continue on towards HST along Kern River and catch JMT at Wallace Ck and finish at WP. Any photos would also help especially near the crossing of the big range.
Krishna

I've not done the route but have done a lot of planning. To me the best route was east in the drainage between East Lake and Lake Reflection, then over Harrison Pass. I recall a post last winter from someone who had gone north to south over Harrison - it wasn't pretty.

Are you really in IL? If so, are you planning on entering the W side due to a trip to the SF Bay area?

The reason these questions are relevant is because the E side is generally considered by many (dare say most on this board) to offer the better starting points in the Sierra, especially since the most popular THs put you right on the crest in fairly short order.

The other point regarding being from out-of-state is that many people underestimate both the nature of class 2/3 passes like Harrison pass, and the radical elevation gains/losses going up over cross-country passes from the W side and then dropping into the Kern Canyon.

In other words, even a trail monster like Richard P would probably start to get pretty tired.

If you had a clean sheet and could enter from the E side, the two possible scenarios I would consider would be:

- go in @ Shepherd, cut across Tyndall, skip LSA, hit the basin just beyond, then head down the Kern & out Wallace/Whitney as planned; or

- go in @ Onion, skip LSA/Kern, head over to Wales/Wallace lakes, come back and finish out Whitney

The other twist is how much snow we get this winter. If it's dry again, the Kern is the last place you're gonna want to be. OTOH, if it's a good snow year, and depending on the timing of your trip, the really high elevation lakes may be too cold, etc. Those are prime conditions for checking out the Kern.

I did this once from Lake South America by going over Ericsson Pass (closer to Mt. Ericsson than Harrison Pass). It was pretty crappy for the first part as in loose, loose, and loose. Then it was just a long steep descent with some route finding and faint use trails ending up on the trail somewhere between Lake Reflection and East Lake. Going the other way would probably be harder in more ways than one. I did it in July of a mediocre snow year.

Booger, Snerf, EP:
Thanks for the input! I am looking at a different alternative to what I have done already over the past few years, namely, OV to WP via Forrester, Shephard pass to WP via Tyndel Ck (that year the whole Tyndel ridge was a frozen snow banner), hwy 180 end to WP, via avalanche, colby passes thru Kern River and HST, Cotton wood lakes to WP via new army pass etc. So next year planning for a new adventure. Depending on how heavy the snow is, may be we will start in mid Aug. Looking at the NG Seki map (205) Harrison Pass looks more doable. Well, never did cross country in Sierra so far. So thought this may be a good plan. Specifically looking for any photos of this route!

No XC experience in the Sierra? Be careful in planning as some of the Sierra passes can be dangerous.

Cool - it looks like you've done all the major route variations to Whitney ... except one.

Rather than look for some added adventure from the west by trying to squeeze in Harrison just for the heck of it, how about:

Horseshoe>Army->Langley->Soldier->Sky Blue->Crabtree pass/lake to either:
- Crabtree Mdw/Guitar->Whitney
- Discovery->Whitney

Last year, I did the former in 3.5 days:
D1 - drive up from SoCal in am, shuttle car, get dropped off @ HM around 4pm, hike to #1 for the night
D2 - up & over AP, hit Langley, head down to upper Soldier, go through keyhole, spend night @ Sky Blue
D3 - up & over Crabtree pass, hike down to PCT/JMT junction, head up to Guitar for last night
D4 - up & out for a burger

I might seem a little short coming from out of state, but rather than just stretch it out, if you have a few extra days, it's easy enough to hit a couple of other highlight areas up/down the 395 like Rae, Evo, Piute, Ritter, etc.

Yep - High Sierra Topix has a complete list.

Crabtree is easy, while Harrison is hard.

Looking at the map - if we want to do a west to east trans-Sierra, HST starting from Crescent Meadow to Kern Hot springs (heard some nice stories about the bath tub there) and ending up at WP seems to be a new adventure for next year. Thanks for talking me out of doing XC in Sierra. May well stick to the trails