For the long weekend we decided to get out of town for what was likely going to be one last hiking trip. I was originally eyeing the section of Sierra NF just south of Yosemite, but there was a low intensity fire in that area fire crews were more or less letting burn freely. So not massively smoky, but why hike in it when it can be avoided... So we instead ended up back over Kaiser Pass and hiking from the Bear Ridge Cutoff Trailhead. The loop was about 76km with just shy of a kilometer on the road getting from the exit trailhead back to the starting trailhead. The plan for day one was to go 20-25km after a midday start. Day two would then be almost entirely off trail and ~30km, and then day three would be whatever was left at the end.
We didn't bother trying to fight long weekend traffic on the Friday night and instead left bright and early on Saturday morning. We were at the trailhead a little before 11, and starting hiking not long afterwards. For this loop I was finally going back and doing the Bear Creek trail that I had such a miserable experience on in the past, but I figured doing it first thing at hiking pace would be a good way to get over my "fears".
 |
| Right around the high point on Bear ridge cutoff trail |
 |
| Hiking along bear creek |
 |
| Warm up for day 2? ...except there was a surprisingly good path through this one. |
Day one was pretty uneventful. The trails were nice, and we didn't see too many people... traffic was even pretty light on the PCT. We started looking for a spot about 30 mins before sunset and found a gorgeous spot (24km in) beneath the Seven Gables north. Seven Gables north might be the prettiest mountain I've come across in the Sierra. Absolutely stunning, and we had a wonderful sunset watching the alpenglow fade over it.
 |
| Day 1 campsite |
 |
| sunset at the creek |
 |
| Yeah, there is going to be a few of these... |
 |
| That glow!! |
We were up a little after sunrise on day two and were pretty quick to get moving as we knew it was a big day with a lot of unknowns being how slow the offtrail was going to be.
 |
| Morning light on Seven gables |
 |
| From a slightly different angle... |
 |
| Beautiful basin |
 |
| The true summit of Seven gables is the mountain on the left |
The entire basin though the bear lakes area was very very easy off trail. It for the most part wasn't too different than having a trail. A very nice start to the day :)
 |
| Little Bear lake |
 |
| Big bear lake |
 |
| White bear lake |
We finally hit some slower off trail going down from Brown Bear pass... it was steep and we had to be choosey to get the line right / not waste loads of time getting cliffed out. There was some easy boulder fields towards the lakes but nothing demoralizing.
 |
| some steepish downwards navigation dropping into Hilgard/Lake Italy drainage |
 |
| Brown Bear Lake |
 |
| Teddy Bear lake (pond) |
 |
| Lake Italy |
We stopped for lunch on the shores of Lake Italy to fuel up for the last climb of the day up to Gabbot Pass. The climb up to the pass wasn't bad at all, generally pretty smooth granite. Once we got to the summit, that all changed. It was ~40 mins of pretty bad boulders to get to the glacial pond where things became a bit easier. But generally it was slow all the way out to the trail on second recess.
 |
| From a little below Gabbot pass looking into the boulder field fun |
 |
| Glacial pond! |
 |
| Upper mills lake |
 |
| Shores of Upper mills |
 |
| Lower Mills lake |
The navigation from lower mills to second recess was hard at times, but I think I pretty much nailed it. We didn't ever have to backtrack or end up somewhere with anything sketchy or dense bushes!
 |
| If you look closely... there was a HUGE cave looking thing in the second recess drainage |
 |
| Loads of these and other mushrooms everywhere. They were loving our wet summer. |
 |
| Back on an established trail and hiking out of second recess |
When we got to the bottom of second recess there was some decent camp spots at the trail junction, but we still had daylight left so we pushed on for another 45 mins until we came to a spot which looked like it might be reasonable. It still took a bit to find something there that was free of rocks, but we made it happen.
 |
| camp spot day 2 in vermillion valley |
Day three was an easy ~22km back out to the car. There was a big climb out of vermillion valley which I wanted to make sure we were up before it got too hot, but that wasn't an issue with how far we had hiked the day before. I was surprised with the amount of water still flowing on the way up the climb and on bear ridge, but it had been a pretty wet summer.
 |
| This squirrel was great. It was chomping down on one of the cones in the background then was AGRESSIVELY defending it's "stash" from me. |
 |
| Hiking out of Vermillion Valley |
It was a great weekend. Day two was continously stunning, and both camp spots were super pretty.
