With a week off around July 4th, I set my eyes on hiking the High Sierra Trail (HST) from Sequoia National Park to Mt Whitney. Unlike my previous North<->South hikes in the Sierras, this would be a West->East hike and cover some new areas I had never seen before. Of course, I had some options once I reached the JMT/PCT before going up Mt Whitney for the fifth time. I may just circle back to Kings Canyon or Sequoia National Parks and there were other routes I could take, as well.

I had to check Recreation.gov frequently to finally grab a HST Permit with a good start date. Starting too early in June would risk getting stopped by lingering snow and ice, so the late June permit I managed to snag was perfect.

As the start day approached, I finalized my gear and packed my backpack. It would be a test of some new lightweight equipment that I had researched and bought since leaving the PCT the previous year.

The key piece of new equipment was a 1 pound tent that used my trekking poles instead of tent poles to save weight (1.25 pounds less than my tent that I had used the year before. New cooking gear that would shave 8 ounces or so off my base weight, lighter weight clothing that would further reduce the weight I had to carry (about a pound less than the clothing I carried last year), lighter water bottles (instead of a heavier Camelbak bladder), and lighter hats and gloves. Every ounce was counted and adjusted to save as much weight as possible.

In the end, I had 10 pounds of food (including a new bear canister that was a half pound lighter than my old one) and 3 pounds of water added to my base pack weight of 20 pounds. Even that was heavier than I could make it if I stripped some items out and ‘rough it’ a bit more. My goal of 15 pounds base weight was within reach for next year if I got a lighter backpack and did without my solar panel. I was also grinning a new GoPro Hero 13 Black to test out to see if I could use it instead of my heavier Sony ZV1 camera. I could save 6 ounces if it was good enough, but for this trip I’d have to carry both.

The hike started out easy enough, the first part of the trail was mostly level and dry and didn’t pose any problems. Some nice views greeted me whenever the forest opened up around me along the ridge the HST started snaking across.

I ended up deciding to stop a little short of my original goal of Bearpaw. Mehrten Creek had some nice campsites with some great views. All the better to test my GoPro out on.

The first challenge was finding an area flat and wide enough for my tent. Since the new tent was not semi-freestanding like my prior tents, it needed to be staked out in a wide patch before using my trekking poles to raise the roof. So, this did make it harder to find a good spot for the tent. With the other tents, I could put the tent poles onto the tent and move the tent around to find a good spot with a good view. So the new tent was a little trickier to find a good spot for, but the weight savings was worth it (so far).

Unfortunately, I had problems with my new cooking gear, my water filter, and I had forgotten a cable to use one of my backup batteries. Separately, maybe I could handle these problems and continue, but together they would be hard to overcome with 5+ days left on the trail.

So, I sadly decided to call it a trip and headed home. 🙁 Second failed trip this year.

Hopefully, my Japan trip would go a LOT better.

What photos I got of the first 7 miles of the trail are below. I took some test time lapse movies in my Jeep and on the trail, but they used so much of the GoPro’s battery capacity to make the camera pretty much useless on a long trip. The GoPro will be returned.