My campsite on night 7: on the eastern side of Mt. Whitney along Iceberg Lake, staging for an early morning ascent of the tallest peak in the continuous 48 via the infamous Mountaineers Route. This was one of the most stunning and awe-inspiring places I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting and is easily the highlight of the SSHR.
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The Southern Sierra High Route is a ~100 mile long high route that straddles the southern portion of the sierra crest in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of Eastern California. It is the shortest of the four “main” high routes that exist in this mountain range, but is the only one that provides access to the beautiful, complex, and moon-like terrain in the vicinity of Mount Whitney.
I decided to attempt a southbound thru-hike of the Southern Sierra High Route (SSHR) in the summer of 2022 as my “big trip” for that summer. After many years of traditional “on-trail” backpacking, including a thru-hike of the JMT in 2019, I had recently begun to explore the wonderfully intricate and intimidating world of off-trail travel and decided that I felt comfortable enough to make the jump from simple weekend trips to a full-blown high route. I knew that I was getting in over my head, physically, mentally, and emotionally, but I was confident that I could come close to completing the route if I gave myself enough time to acclimatize, enough food to sustain my energy needs, and enough motivation to overcome the hardships one encounters during this type of travel.
This page describes my successful thru-hike of the high route, but it is not a route guide. If you’re in search of a full guide to the SSHR, I recommend you start with the official SSHR Route Guide created by none other than Alan Dixon and Don Wilson (the founders of the route) themselves. If you have any questions about either the route or my experience of hiking it, feel free to comment on this page and I’ll try to get back to you. A huge part of this trip, and the aspect that is likely most responsible for my being able to successfully complete this route, was the extensive food preparation and dialing in a minimally-sufficient ultralight kit. I hope to expand this trip report to describe my food prep at some point and I also hope to discuss my gear setup as well. All photos on this trip were taken with a Sony A7III camera and a Sony 24-105mm F4 lens. This set up was heavy and cumbersome, but I believe the photos were worth it. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed taking them.
Dates: August 5th - August 13th, 2022
Miles: 107.1 according to Strava, 99.0 according to Gaia
Elevation gain: 27,355 feet
GPS Recording: Gaia GPS, Strava
Select Photos Album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/U9Xcz5CwCo32Vjxr5
Gear List: Lightpack