SHR Day 13 - 9.3 Miles, 3,377 ft ascent

Last night everything got wet from condensation. Our tent was soaked, our sleeping bags were damp, and even the tops of the bear canisters were sopping when I went to collect them. So, we seized the opportunity for extra coffee in the tent while things dried out.

We got to walking around 9am and quickly made it to old mine ruins. There were collapsed stone shelters, mine equipment, and even a bunch of mine shafts! It was really neat to explore. We did two passes today — Mine Shaft Pass and Conness Pass. The descent down Conness Pass was steep. We then headed to Secret Lake, which is on a shelf just below our next pass (Sky Pilot Col). We decided to call it a day early and tackle Sky Pilot first thing when we wake up. It looks intimidating. For dinner we had Creamy Tomato Rotini. Yum! -T

Day 14 - 8.7 miles, 3,159 ft ascent

Today was another fun but exhausting day. We started with Sky Pilot Col. The ascent and descent directly up/down from the pass were relatively easy, but then the descent continued with miles of scree and boulder fields to traverse. It was exhausting and took forever. We did only about two miles in four hours. The rocks weren’t granite, which we have gotten used to, so that didn’t help. When we got past the boulder fields, we descended further into a river valley and then up out of the valley towards our next pass. It included a bit of bushwhacking, but we followed some animal trails which helped. One of the animal trails we followed for a while included at least three bears poops (plus plenty of deer poop). We haven’t seen a bear since day 1 though.

Next up was Stanton Pass, our final notoriously hard pass with class 3 scrambling (Frozen Lake Pass and Snow Tongue Pass were the other two). We had a lunch of cold soaked sushi bowl at a nice lake before the final ascent. The ascent was relatively straightforward. The descent immediately below the pass was a little tricky. We definitely had to use both our hands and feet to make it down some steep sections. I’d say Frozen Lake and Snow Tongue were both harder (or maybe we’ve just gotten stronger and better at navigating the passes?!). We then descended into a lovely river valley and were exhausted, so we decided to set up camp early. It was a beautiful evening to relax and soak up the views. We have one final pass tomorrow before we finish the SHR. -R

Day 15 - 7.5 Miles, 958 ft ascent

We made it! We woke up early and finished off the last of our coffee and ate our final breakfast. The climb to Horse Creek Pass was very easy, so we thought the descent would be too… but we should know by now, north-facing descents are always harder than south-facing climbs! It wasn’t terrible, but it was steep and slow and we were ready for the restaurant at the finish!

The off-trail descent became an on-trail descent and then we could see a campground and marina below us. At about 12:30 we stumbled into the restaurant and loaded up on veggie burgers, fries, coffee, and soda. We discussed the dilemma of getting back to our car with our super-friendly waitress, Lauren, who offered to drive us into Bridgeport for the first leg of what will be a loonnngg trip back to where we started. We got internet in Bridgeport and discovered that we can rent a car from the Mammoth airport when it opens tomorrow morning at 9am. So, we hopped on a bus to Bridgeport and had restaurant ramen for dinner there. We decided to camp on public land walking distance from the airport, so we went to the grocery store to buy snacks (and a cake to celebrate), expecting to Uber out of town. Instead, we bumped into a thruhiker named Flash who offered to drive us to our intended campsite! We hopped in his car, got a ride to the middle of nowhere, and enjoyed our cake amongst endless Sagebrush. Yum! -T

Day 16 - 0 Miles, 0 Feet of ascent (but lots of driving)

We woke up, walked to the airport, and were heartbroken to learn that they didn’t actually have a car for us! Even though we reserved one online, the online system was lying (we did not read the fine print that said we need to reserve at least 48 hours in advance to be guaranteed a car). We have to work tomorrow and had no idea how we’d get home, so we decided to wait at the car rental facility to see if there would be a “no call, no show”. It turned out there was! We started driving and then drove a LONG way back to King’s Canyon, picked up our car, and started driving again to FINALLY get home at about 2:30 am. -T

Final Thoughts

Wow! The Sierra High Route was amazing. It was remote, it was beautiful, it was long, and it was MUCH more challenging than most of the hikes we’ve done. At the end, we had completely reset and were not ready to stop. We wish we could have kept on walking for another four months! Soon...

We really want to emphasize that this is not a route for beginners. Anyone attempting this should have considerable experience with off trail travel and backcountry navigation.

Video

We posted long videos to bring you along with us on the first and second half of the Sierra High Route on Youtube. The second video just went live today:

SHR Day 10 - 10.8 miles, 3,758 feet ascent

We camped overnight in the Reds Meadow Campground’s backpacker site with lots of PCT and JMT hikers. Tim woke me up early and convinced me to head straight to the hot spring close by. It was big and hot!! We made/drank coffee and relaxed for a while. It felt great on our sore muscles. Eventually we got out, packed up our backpacks, and headed to the restaurant. We ate breakfast burritos and drank tons of coffee. We were the first hikers to wake up, but the last to leave Reds Meadow. 😅

We got back on the trail at around 9am. The SHR took us right through Devils Postpile National Monument. We then followed some trails to the base of Nancy Pass. It started raining, so we set up our tent for an hour to wait it out. The sun came out and there was a break In the rain, so we went for the pass. We could see more rain was coming—there were plenty of dark clouds in the distance. We did the pass as quick as we could because we did not want to be caught in the rain off trail on slippery rocks. The pass was pretty straightforward. When we got down from the steep, rocky part of the pass and onto some grass, it started to sprinkle. Our next pass was supposed to be Deadhorse Pass (which wasn’t too far from Nancy Pass) and then we were supposed to get onto another trail. We saw that we could keep going down and around Deadhorse Pass to intersect the trail early and skip the pass. We decided to do that rather than attempt the pass in the rain. We had some extra bushwhacking and water crossings, but we felt it was the safer option. We made it to the trail, and the rain picked up so we set up camp early at around 5pm in a stand of big trees near a stream. The weather forecast looks like we might have some rain again tomorrow afternoon. -R

SHR Day 11 - 14.6 Miles, 4,018 ft ascent

Today was Opposite Day: the passes were easy and the trails were hard, relatively speaking. We woke up with damp everything so we took an extra 30 minutes getting ready in the morning. We thought we’d have an easy start with several miles of trails before the off-trail passes, but it turned out those trails were barely built, unmaintained, and brutal! We took several hours to do four miles of trails before officially heading off-trail for White Bark Pass and Garnett Pass. Both were much easier than expected (and definitely easier than the morning’s “trails”). We aren’t sure if these were easy passes or if we’re getting stronger.

We took a 3:30 pm lunch break at the base of Mt. Ritter. Weaving through a cluster of mountains around Ritter should be our next off-trail segment, but the mountain still has a lot of snow that we’d have to traverse and we didn’t bring microspikes. Plus, rain clouds loomed above the mountain and we don’t want to get caught at the top of a sketchy pass in the rain. So, we opted to detour around it. It’s a bummer to miss this part of the Sierra High Route, but we’d rather be safe than sorry. We’re camped a couple of miles outside Yosemite, where we’ll reconnect with the SHR at Tuolumne Meadows. For dinner we had chili mac. Yum! -T

SHR Day 12 - 22.2 miles, 3,074 ft ascent

Today we continued on the PCT/JMT on our detour around the Mount Ritter area of the SHR. We went over Donohue Pass and entered Yosemite National Park. We kept looking back and noticing how snowy it looked around Mount Ritter. We bumped into multiple other groups of hikers who said they got hail and then heavy rain for a bit yesterday. That made us feel better about our decision to drop down to the trail for a bit. We somehow managed to only get a few sprinkles yesterday. We hiked into Tuolumne Meadows and ate some veggies burgers while talking to PCT and JMT hikers. We then met back up with the SHR and hiked up to a beautiful lake where we set up camp. We have less than 30 miles to go, including one of the three hardest passes, but the weather forecast is looking great going forward and we have plenty of food. -R

Video

A 1-hour video of the first half of the route is on Youtube! The second half of the route will go live out August 15!

SHR Day 7 - 13.1 Miles, 2,555 ft ascent

Our stats from today make it look like we took it easy… we did not. Last night we slept well at 11,000 feet under bright stars and the glowing Milky Way. Then we woke up, got ready, and started a hard day! We climbed to 12,365 feet to go over Feather Pass. The descent was hard until we hit snow, and then we were able to move a lot more quickly. After that we did White Bear Pass. This descent was hard too, and instead of snow toward the bottom there was a boulder field that took a long time to cross. We’re walking north, so we are usually climbing the south-facing slope and descending the north-facing slope. That means the descents have mostly been harder than the ascents. We had done 7 miles at 2:30 pm at an average speed of less than 1 mile per hour. We found ourselves at a gorgeous lake called White Bear Lake and decided to swim, eat lunch, and take a break. Renee even took a nap!

We decided during our break to detour on trails around the next three off trail passes. We miscalculated how fast (slow) we would be able to do them, and we don’t have enough food with us to extend the time until we resupply. We’re bummed that we will miss a few passes, but we are looking forward to doing Silver Pass on the PCT instead. After starting the detour we took an unmaintained trail down to lower elevation and met the PCT. We found a place to camp next to Bear Creek and enjoyed Unstuffed Peppers for dinner. Yum! -T

SHR Day 8 - 23.1 miles, 5,928 ft ascent

Today was a great day on the trail. We walked over Silver Pass on the JMT/PCT. In the evening we met back up with the SHR where it drops down to the JMT/PCT. We were having so much fun hiking that we didn’t stop until sunset at around 8:15pm. It was a hot day, but the evening hours were cooler and quite peaceful. The evening is maybe the best time to hike because the temperatures cool down. We were tired when we finally set up camp but nowhere near as tired as yesterday when we did much fewer miles and much less elevation gain. On-trail hiking is much easier than off-trail hiking! We missed about 19 miles and 3 off trail passes of the SHR, replacing them with about 25 on trail miles and 1 on trail pass, but we are well set up to not run out of food now. We have about 14 miles to go to our resupply stop off Reds Meadow Resort. We’re hoping we can make it there tomorrow. We only have one pass before Reds Meadow (and that pass is partially on trail). 🤞

We didn’t see as many hikers today as we did when we were on the JMT/PCT the day we did Muir Pass. Most hikers we bumped into were JMT hikers heading southbound. In the evening we met Rambler (aka Tictok) who was doing a PCT flip flop. Turns out he thruhiked the PCT southbound the year we thruhiked the PCT northbound (2018). -R

SHR Day 9 - 15.4 Miles, 2,730 ft ascent

Today was going to be an easy downhill stroll into our resupplying… or so we thought. It actually had two passes and plenty of brutal ridge walking, but dreams of restaurant food made it fly by. We went over Duck Pass and Deer Pass in terrain we have become used to, but then spent much of the day walking through fascinating volcanic terrain including colorful mountains, feather-light pumice stones, and lots of volcanic rock.

We got to the Red’s Meadow general store just after 3 pm, picked up our resupply box, ate garden burgers with chips, bought more chips and drinks, and then went shopping to top up our snacks for the stretch ahead. While shopping and eating, we had a lot of fun chatting with PCT and JMT hikers, who were also resupplying at Red’s Meadow, and learning about their hikes. The restaurant closed before we were ready to eat dinner, so we had to eat what the general store had for sale… Backpacker’s Pantry brand beans and rice (!?). It was nothing like what we make, but we wrapped it in tortillas and topped it with Fritos, so it did the job. We did some chores (including finishing up our next YouTube video) while our electronics charged, and then headed toward bed. We are camping in Red’s Meadow campground tonight and we’ll get back out there first thing in the morning. -T

Video!

Here’s a video of the first 118 miles our trip, from the start to Red’s Meadows.

SHR Day 4 - 13.8 mi, 3704 ft ascent

Today was a great day on trail. We did 4 passes! The first ~6 miles of today we were on the PCT/JMT, and we went over Mather Pass. We had tons of fun chatting with both JMT and PCT hikers. We then left the trail and headed to Cirque Pass. We met a hiker near the top who had come over all three of our next passes. He said they were all relatively straightforward and similar to the one we were on. That boosted our spirits. And he was correct! After Cirque Pass, we went over Potluck Pass and Knapsack Pass. They all had big, smooth rock ledges, almost like shelves, with some grassy spots. They weren’t easy by any means, but we enjoyed working together to find a route up/down each one. At the end of the day, we made it back to another trail, Bishop Pass Trail. We’ll follow Bishop Pass Trail to the JMT/PCT. We’ll be on trails for the next ~20 miles. We’re definitely behind schedule, but we hope to make some big miles tomorrow since we’ll be on trails for most of the day. We are getting concerned about food (and fuel and power). We haven’t done an exact count yet, but we think we have enough food to make it 5 more days. We have 79 miles to our resupply, so we need to average almost 16 miles per day which we haven’t been close to hitting yet. We think/hope we’ll be just fine though—our packs are getting lighter every day as we eat food, we’re getting more comfortable with the off trail hiking, and we’re getting more acclimated to the high elevation (we are still getting shorter of breath than we should be on the climbs). 🤞🤞 -R

SHR Day 5 - 19.3 Miles, 4,036 ft ascent

We did a lot more miles today than we have been doing, but that’s because 99% of today was spent on a trail! First Bishop Pass Trail, and then about 15 miles on the JMT/PCT over Muir Pass. The change of pace (literally) was welcome, but we aren’t fooling ourselves into thinking things will be this easy when we're back off trail. We spent the morning climbing to Muir Pass, which has a cool hut, and we met some friendly people there who we chatted with for a while (Julie and Phillip). As we descended we couldn’t figure out if we were on the right trail — we were 50 feet above a lake, and a parallel trail ran right along the trail. We realized the trail we were on was new and pondered how much fun it would be to be on the trail crew building it… then we turned a corner and saw the trail crew building it! They were super friendly and explained that the re-route is to protect the lakeshore and to protect an endangered frog. Apparently a crew of 20 people spent three months doing the majority of the work last summer. Trail building is hard work! Thank you to everybody who does it! We moseyed on for a few more miles before hitting the spot where we depart the trail again. We decided we were ready to call it a day, so we started looking for a campsite right when we got off trail and found an amazing one in just a few minutes. We’re camped below Darwin Bench and above Evolution Valley on the side of a mountain. For dinner we had peanut butter pasta. Yum! -T

SHR day 6 - 15.8 miles, 3925 ft ascent

Today started with Snow Tongue Pass on the Glacier Divide. Getting up to the pass was relatively easy, but when we got to the top and looked at the descent on the north side, we considered turning around. It was 200’-300’ straight down with loose dirt/sand and rocks. We scoped it for a while and found a safe looking route. We took it really slow/carefully and made it down the steep part safely. We then had a couple of miles of boulder fields—piles of rocks of all different shapes and sizes from fist size to car size. Tim is relatively quick on the boulder fields, but I am slow. We were exhausted when we finally made it through the boulder fields, so we stopped for lunch at a beautiful lake and went for a swim. We looked at our maps and decided to take some trails around the next off-trail pass, Puppet Pass, due to our dwindling food supply and slow speed off-trail. We made it back to the SHR towards the end of the day. We are camped at a beautiful lake surrounded by rocky peaks about 3 miles from our next pass. Even though the trail is hard, we are absolutely loving being high in the mountains and feel like we have them all to ourselves. We only saw one person today, Walt, and that was on our detour on trails. We have 45 miles to go and 3 days of food (which we could maybe stretch to 3.5 days). 🤞 -R

PS: We’re launching a line of backpacking cookware! Sign up for the waitlist here and get it first.

We’re off on the Sierra High Route! It will take us about 200 miles from South to North across the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It’s called a “Route” instead of a trail because it’s not a trail at all. There’s a series of landmarks that we’ll connect by finding the most navigable path between them. This has been a bucket-list trip for us since 2023, when we intended to hike it but deep snow that lasted late into the summer kept us off.

SHR Day 1: 9.3 Miles, 5,580 ft ascent

We arrived at Road’s End Ranger Station late last night and slept in our car so we could get an early start. That didn’t happen. We slept in, took our time with final preparations, and finally got started at about noon. Speaking of our car, when we finish this trip we have no idea how we’ll get back to pick it up, but we’ll figure something out. (No shuttles go to the trailhead, so it will probably be either hitchhiking or a combination of hitchhiking, public transit and/or renting a car to drive ourselves back to Kings Canyon).

The trail today just went up, up, up. We’ve both been getting elevation sickness above 10,000 ft lately (we’re not well-acclimated this season), so we took every precaution we could think of to fend it off. We did a short distance, we drank lots of water, had plenty of electrolytes, ate a lot, and took several breaks. It went well! I am symptom-free, and Renee’s case is much less than when we spent a night at below 10,000 feet two weeks ago. That’s good, because from here we’ll continue to climb!

We saw a rattlesnake right away, and about five miles later a friendly black bear came moseying down the trail. He sat near the trail looking for food for a long time, so we eventually decided to pass closer than we usually would. He just watched as we walked by.

We left trails for the first time right before finding a nice campsite by a lake at the base of a pass that we’ll be scrambling up tomorrow. For dinner we had pumpkin curry soup. Yum! -T

SHR Day 2 - 13 mi, 4,032 ft ascent

It rained a bit overnight, but we both woke up feeling pretty good. It seems like our hydration plan yesterday worked because we both had minimum elevation sickness! We went over 3 passes today—all at just over 11,000 ft and all off trail. We weren’t exactly sure what to expect being off trail, but it went surprisingly well! We were either on rocks above the trees, or when we were in the trees, the landscape is so dry that the walking was easy (no bushwhacking like we had in Washington on the Pacific Northwest Circuit). One of the passes had some big rocks on the descent which were a bit challenging. I was a bit nervous and needed Tim’s help getting down a big rock once (I had to take off my pack, put my hand on his shoulder, and do a big jump). We were only on a trail for about 2-3 miles today, but even that trail was clearly not used often and hard to follow at times. The weather was overcast all day, which was great. Yesterday was hot! The are tons of wildflowers in bloom right now—so many beautiful colors (pink, purple, yellow, orange). The mosquitoes were pretty bad whenever we were near water, especially in the meadows. We decided to camp up high away from water to avoid them.

Saw two SHR hikers right before camp, a marmot in the morning at camp, and three big bucks in a meadow. -R

SHR Day 3 - 9.6 Miles, 3,611 ft ascent

Wow. Neither of us realized today would be as hard as it was. We thought we would cross over five mountain passes, but we only did three and they drained us! The first two were fine. The third was “Frozen Lakes Pass”. It was at 12,321 feet, but elevation wasn’t the hard part — boulders were! We scaled a wall of big boulders to get up and descended what seemed like endless boulders to get down. It was HARD WORK. It turns out I’m a little more confident with my footing on boulders than Renee is so I taught her some of my techniques. In the evening we made it to an intersection between our route and the Pacific Crest Trail / John Muir Trail, and we get to follow the trail for the next ~6 miles. That will be a welcome change of pace! Hopefully when we head back off-trail things will go more smoothly than they did today! We set up camp at ~11,400 ft at the base of Mather Pass, with towering peaks above us in 3 directions and an endless expanse of mountains opening up in the fourth. It’s pretty. The mosquitos are crazy down low and near water, but when we camp high and dry it’s basically mosquito-free. For dinner we had chili mac. Yum! -T

PS: We’re about to release a brand new line of cookware with a watertight lid! It’s perfect for cooking, cold soaking, and dish-doing on the trail! See it in action and sign up for the waitlist to get it first!

We can’t pinpoint why, but a statement we stand behind is that that we have never had a store-bought backpacking meal that tastes as good as the ones we make ourselves. We just developed a new taco recipe that proves the point yet again.

Beans are our primary source of protein on the trail (and at home), and they definitely don’t disappoint in these Blac…

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We were with our friend, “Dirty Money”, thruhiking the Continental Divide Trail. Instead of pushing on into the dark looking for a sheltered place to camp, the three of us made the dec…

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We walked across Los Angeles. It was 37 miles and took an entire day.

We pulled out a map and traced a route that would take us through as much of the city as possible. We started in the San Gabriel Mountains, descended to the Rose Bowl, crossed the LA River, wandered through Chinatown, downtown, and Koreatown, then curved through Beverly Hills before f…

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We’ve been getting ripped apart lately for our approach to ultralight backpacking. Over the last two months we’ve been helping our friend Luca transition from day hiking and car camping to backpacking. Along the way, we’ve posted videos about reducing the weight of his shoes, clothing, and gear. Responses have ranged from “It was at this point that I kn…

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We “thruhiked” San Francisco! It was an experiment: is it possible to recreate the thruhike experience, but in one day in an urban setting? This was completely different from our usual wilderness thruhikes, but in many ways it was exactly the same. Before getting into what that was like, here’s how and why we ended up doing it.

Our first ultra-long walk …

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Tim here. This past weekend I flew to Washington State for a challenging snowshoe trip in the Mt. Baker wilderness with my brother, Danny. Renee was initially going to come too, but foster-kitten and work responsibilities kept her home for the weekend.

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Ever since we began long-distance hiking our unofficial motto has been, “when in doubt, leave it out”. This approach has served us well for thousands and thousands of miles on the trail. To cover long distances you have to walk all day, so anything you can do to make the walking part more pleasant is worth it. For us, this means leaving out luxuries at …

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Four years ago we walked from Mexico to Canada on the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) . The CDT has a lot of alternate routes and shortcuts, but we to stuck to the official trail the entire time (other than when the trail was closed due to fires). The Gila Alternate is an extremely popular alternate that probably 99% of thruhikers take. We promised ourse…

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Thruhikers A Guide to Life on the Trail

We put our hearts and souls into this backpacking guide and recipe book! We hope you en…

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We started the 12K’s of Christmas tradition in 2020 when we lived in Germany, 4,000 miles (6,500 km) away from our families, and realized that a virtual 12K would be a great way to stay connected! That first year, five people participated — the two of us and three of our family members.

But since since 2020 we’ve m…

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Renee just spent a week out of town traveling for work. So, all by my lonesome, I had to find a way to fill the time. What better activity than developing a brand new recipe for the trail!? Pumpkin and squash are Renee’s favorite foods, and this is the season for pumpkin and squash, so I decided to make something pumpkin-inspired. Since fall is a great …

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In our latest recipe face-off, Renee’s Savory Grits destroyed Tim’s Strawberry Banana Rice Pudding, but that’s only because the grits were just sooo good. Rice pudding was an outstanding recipe on it’s own, especially for folks who like to keep things sweet in the morning.

Even though this recipe isn’t this year’s champion, we wanted to share it so folk…

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At least once a year we hold a recipe face-off. Renee vs. Tim, two recipes enter, and only one comes out a winner. This time around we set the theme to be freeze-dried breakfast, and the stakes were high: we were tied 2-2, with Renee winning our first contest, Tim winning the next two, and Renee winning the fourth. That means best-of-five bragging right…

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We had already been backpackers for years and years when we set out on our first thruhike (the PCT), so we thought we already had a lot of the gear we needed... As it turned out, we didn’t! In the interest of going lighter, we ended up replacing our backpacks, tent, shoes, clothing, and almost everything else to make it trip-specific. Since then we’ve d…

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I (Renee) grew up enjoying tater tot casserole, but freeze-dried is the only way Tim’s eaten it! We used our Harvest Right freeze dryer to make a plant-based version of tater tot casserole that can be enjoyed on the trail… and it tastes AMAZING! We have eaten this on several trips, and it’s always mind boggling that something comforting can come out of…

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