I had originally planned to do an off-trail trip with my friend Paulina this weekend, but unexpected circumstances (i.e. food poisoning) led to this becoming a solo sunrise summit adventure. My goal was Buck Mountain, which offers a panoramic view of the Palisades in a way no other peak in the area can compete with. The “standard” route of this rarely-climbed peak starts with a bushwhack up from the South Fork Big Pine Creek trail. Not wanting to do that in the dark, I opted instead to suffer up scree and chossy talus from Big Pine Lakes.

I have been wanting to get out to the Evolution area since my failed trip to Darwin Canyon last summer. I had booked permits to enter via Lamarck Lakes this summer back in January, but recent monsoon weather in the Sierra had put a question mark in those plans right up until the day before. With a near perfect forecast for the weekend, I took Friday off of work and headed back to Sierra for a leisurely summit bid. The plan was to establish base camp at Darwin Bench and spend the second day relaxing before summiting Mt. Goethe at sunset.

Over the holiday weekend, I decided to go for a summit bid of Mt. Sill, one of California’s few 14ers perched in the center of the Palisades subrange with fantastic summit views. Since I wasn’t sure of my ability to ascend the shorter but more intense North Couloir, I decided to make a more leisurely trip out of the Southwest Slopes route, which contours around the Palisades via several cross country passes before ascending the more gentle slopes from the south.

After revisiting lots of old locations, I finally sprung for something new: a quick weekend trip up to Baboon Lakes area including scrambling up some of the unnamed peaks. Bivy’d up high and got to watch both the last and first light over the Sierra Crest.

Another training hike to a summit I’ve visited before. Early summer conditions make Mt. Morgan a much more feasible summit bivy as one doesn’t have to carry water all the way from Francis Lake to the summit.

This was a quick training hike to a summit I’ve stood on multiple times before. The hike was about 5200 ft of gain from the Big Pine Lakes trailhead and the south slopes of the peak are an exhausting scree slog.

These days, I’ve been venturing into the Sierra earlier and earlier each summer. Part of it is getting to see the mountains as they shed their winter coat, but another part is making sure I’m in shape for the big objectives I usually plan later in the summer. My first real objective this season was a summit bivy of Mt. Gould near Kearsarge Pass. This ended up being a really excellent trip with some unsettled weather and the phenomenal photo opportunities that accompany it.

Lately, I’ve become something of a bad-weather hiker, only visiting Yosemite during or in the immediate aftermath of a storm. The cloud and fog conditions are superb if one is lucky enough to catch them dancing around the park’s famed granite walls. For awhile now, I’ve had the idea to try photographing Yosemite valley from above with fresh snow and fog clinging to the valley floor at sunrise. Conditions lined up perfectly in the last full week of April and I found myself taking off work midweek to make this trip happen.

The first backpacking trip of the year for me, done with my friend Paulina while Yosemite backcountry permits were still self-issued. Definitely a challenging trip considering I’d been slacking with my fitness over the winter. We got to see the falls in peak spring conditions and total solitude. On the hike down, we counted over 600 day hikers going up the upper fall!

Between winter hikes in the valley, I’ve been trying to up my photography in the snow. A golden opportunity came in February with a sequence of cold, heavy storms hitting the Sierra. Unfortunately, the record-breaking snow closed down large parts of the park, including Tunnel View, and made many hikes treacherous. Still, it was a blast to relax and shoot in a nearly-empty park.

Since moving to California, I’ve been trying to photograph Yosemite Valley after a storm with low-lying clouds clinging to the peaks. Over the holidays, I was able to get out to the park in the midst of some early winter storms and got my wish. Not much to see here other than a handful of shots from Tunnel View, but exciting for me nonetheless!

This was likely my last foray into the High Sierra for the year. As I write this, the Sierra and much of California is getting battered by the first atmospheric river of the season; snow for days, much needed rain in the lowlands, even the moss in my apartment’s parking lot has been rejuvenated. I settled on a destination I had never been to yet for this last trip — Cloud’s Rest in Yosemite.

Last year, I tried to do a late season summit bivy of Mt. Morgan South but had to bail a couple hundred feet below the summit due to deep, fresh snow from an early storm. The snow line started around 12500 ft but was consistently 5+ ft deep at the higher elevations. Better prepared this time, I slept on the summit was rewarded with both sunset and sunrise views from up high.

I’ve always wanted to do a late season trip up to Big Pine Lakes to see them when the glacial silt in the water is at its peak. I was itching to go for a hike but not feeling particularly motivated to do anything too intense so this day trip was a good compromise. The lighting this late in the season wasn’t great but otherwise this was a great trip for keeping the hiking muscles in shape!

I’ve wanted to visit this high alpine lake below Mt. Whitney since I first saw a photo of it on a trip report of the Mountaineers’ Route. I’ve already summited Whitney once via the JMT and wasn’t interested in doing the Mountaineers’ Route, but this lake definitely piqued my interest: nestled beneath the towering spires of Whitney and its sub-peaks arranged in a perfectly symmetric manner.

This somewhat esoteric peak is often overlooked in favor of its taller neighbors — Middle Palisade and Norman Clyde Peak. However, its summit offers a truly incredible view of the southern Palisades that you can’t get from many other vantage points. I wanted to photograph sunrise at the summit, which meant lugging a heavy pack with overnight gear up nearly 5000 ft of elevation gain.

I had originally planned to head up the South Fork of Big Pine Creek this weekend, but thick smoke from the Garnet Fire on the west side was creating extremely hazardous air quality conditions everywhere in the Sierra. I pivoted at the last minute and decided to check out Twenty-Lakes Basin, an area of the Sierra that’s always been on my to-do list but ends up playing second fiddle to something more exciting. I wasn’t successful in totally avoiding the smoke, but I did get to experience a pretty cool — and very accessible — corner of the Sierra. My plan was to summit Shepherd Crest, a 12000-ft peak overlooking North Peak, and camp somewhere in its vicinity.

It felt like I had angered the gods. I had been looking forward to this hike all summer but instead of watching the sunset from one of my favorite places in the Sierra, I was hunkered down at 12,000 ft above sea level, praying that the dozens of lightning strikes overhead wouldn’t strike my tent. Weather in the Sierra Nevada isn’t as fickle as some might have you think, but when storms are in the forecast it can be hard to tell whether they materialize as just ominous clouds or something more.

It’s been a while since I’ve made an update about hiking trips, so I figured it best to start with a short one. I wanted to return to the Haeckel Col area for some astrophotography after passing through with my friend Paulina on our Ionian Basin trip. My plan was to camp somewhere on the ridge between Hungry Packer Lake and Midnight Lake and photograph the Milky Way over Picture Peak.

The hardest single day push I’ve done in the Sierra yet, featuring a heat wave, wildfire smoke, and caloric-deficit-induced altitude sickness. I’ve been getting out into the High Sierra more weekends than not this summer, gradually tackling harder and harder trips, and with that came the (mostly-justified) confidence that I could handle 12 miles and 4900 ft of elevation gain with a heavy pack. My plan was to take my overnight gear as close to the summit of Mt. Davis as possible and photograph both sunrise and sunset.