My first real backpacking trip of the season was an easy one. The snow was still clinging to the peaks, the crowds mostly kept to greener pastures, and my lungs protested their re-introduction to sleeping about 10,000 ft.

I usually only post duplicate trip reports when the second trip has an interesting feature missing from the prior report. In truth, this was a very last minute trip with the only goal being astrophotography. I had tried to capture the Milky Way above Bear Creek Spire last September, but it was too late in the year and I had brought the wrong lens. This time, armed with much more technical skills, I was successful.

This is a pretty short post just detailing my experiences using a star tracker for the first time.

I heard of Eagle Tower for the first time this winter when some descending hikers told me they were coming from Eagle Tower. Not knowing there was a difference between Eagle Tower and the eponymous peak (my real destination that day), I naively told them “oh, me too!” After that day, I did some research on Eagle Tower but largely put it out of mind. This spring, my friend Ngan and I were planning to spend a relaxed day in Yosemite Valley to do some photography but we both realized we’d probably be pretty bored by the afternoon without some hiking thrown into the mix. One thing lead to another and we had settled on a day hike to Eagle Tower before watching sunset at the newly reopened Glacier Point.

For a few days each year, Glacier Point Road in Yosemite opens only to cyclists just before it reopens to cars. I’m by no means a cyclist and haven’t ridden a bike in the better part of a decade, but my friend Paulina convinced me to do this ride with her by lending me her e-bike. We had the entire road to ourselves at sunset and ate dinner under the stars and moon

I was due for a monthly conditioning hike and chose to go up the Mist Trail and JMT up to Panorama Point since I had never been up that way before, not even to Vernal and Nevada Falls. My real aim was an unnamed 7007-ft summit above Panorama Point which I had hoped would have good views of the surrounding area.

With late April in Yosemite comes raging waterfalls, flooding rivers, and lush green foliage. This was the first of my photography visits to the valley and was a real treat to see the transformation from winter.

I had been putting off doing this hike for a couple of years since I knew it was extremely popular and I’d have little privacy on the trail. I tackled this one on a beautiful Sunday evening and had a great time. Crowded? Sure. Manageable? Absolutely. And the views in spring are absolutely worth it.

Up until this month, I had never done any hiking in the Bay Area save for an ill-fated hike in Los Gatos the week I moved to California. It was July and the hills were the brown and yellow of dead grass. Needless to say, it was not a good first impression of the area. But every year in late winter, the hills transform into a lush green as the grasses are nourished by winter rains. None of the hikes here are particularly challenging, but they’re extremely picturesque for the photography-minded.

April Fools Day brought more snow to the Sierra Nevada, including Yosemite Valley. This wasn’t a particularly intense storm, but I had checked the valley webcams that night and, combined with the favorable weather forecast calling for cold temps and clear skies in the morning, realized this could be my last chance to photograph the snow this year. On Tuesday night, I pulled the trigger and decided to take a half day off work to photograph sunrise in the Valley.

True to my promise to myself, I managed to get out for a substantial hike about once a month this winter, including hikes to Dewey Point and Yosemite Point. This season has been relatively average for the Sierra in terms of snowpack, but like most other things out here, the snow comes in extremes. A month or two can go by without any significant snowfall followed by multiple storms dumping 5-6 ft of snow in one go.

With winter fast-approaching, I’ve been looking for ways to continue hiking all year-round. When I lived in New England, winters were very cold and while trails were accessible, the weather was fickle and it could be deadly to get caught out in marginal conditions. Plus, the scenery there did not hold a candle to anything on the West Coast which just made it that much harder. Now that I live in California with Yosemite just a stone’s throw away, getting out there in the winter is so much easier. I visited Yosemite Valley in peak fall conditions a few weeks ago and again this week at the onset of winter conditions to get some conditioning hikes in.

I typically only hike in summer which means that I’m usually very out of shape at the start of prime backpacking season. Thus, I’ve been making a very concerted effort this year to get out in the backcountry year-round. Due to forecasted high winds, I did a quick day hike in the Hoover Wilderness rather than try to do an overnight trip. I had never been to the Hoover Wilderness before but it offered quick, easy access to the Sierra high country and ended up being a great day outing.

The last major backpacking trip of the year for me. Most of my weekend trips (and even my longer trips) tend to keep it under 3000 ft of elevation gain, mostly because the majority of the eastern Sierra hikes that don’t involve climbing a peak usually don’t exceed 3000 ft of gain. Granite Park though is a whopping 8.5 miles and 4500 ft of gain from the Pine Creek trailhead. I viewed this hike as a challenge to check my physical fitness and also check out an area of the Sierra I’ve wanted to see for a long time.

An easy and relaxing trip to the mountains was just what I needed to close out September. I met up with my friend Nicole (and her pup Noodle) and her friend Carlos for a trip to Little Lakes Valley for the weekend. This is one of the easiest high elevation hikes in the Sierra with plenty of great views right from the trailhead. We set up camp relatively close to the trailhead and then rambled around the upper lakes for the rest of the day.

I set out to photograph sunrise from the summit of Mt. Morgan South on a chilly summer morning – the last Saturday of summer, in fact. It had snowed on two separate occasions the week before and, unbeknownst to me, the upper reaches of the mountain held 3+ feet of unconsolidated snow. The conditions slowed me down immensely and I made it 150 ft below the summit just as the sun painted the surrounding peaks orange.

I hadn’t done a true cross country hike in a while, and I can’t think of a more worthy one than a jaunt into the Ionian Basin. This started off as a planned Labor Day Weekend trip to Darwin Bench which had been on my backpacking list for a while and slowly evolved as researched the area and learned about the fabled basin.

This peak is often overlooked in favor of its more popular neighbors (Vagabond and Cloudripper) but it has one of the best views of the Palisades that can be found in the Sierra. Being that the Palisades are oriented northwest to southeast and tower over most of the front range peaks on the east side, Sky Haven offers an absolutely amazing sunrise view.

This was my second trip here this summer, the first being in late June with my friend Holly. The lakes were not as concentrated with glacial silt back then and I messed up a photo of the Milky Way I had really wanted to get, so I planned a second more last-minute trip for the first weekend of August when I knew the moon would set well before the stars came out.

This was my first proper scramble since moving to California and it was a great one to ease into things again. This was a tiring but easy scramble on really solid rock and was honestly more just hiking up talus. I want to watch the sunrise from the summit so I woke up at 2am – a decision I don’t regret in the slightest.