Humphreys Basin 2025

August 12 – Piute Pass Trailhead to Muriel Lake

August 13 – Muriel Lake to Tomahawk Lake

August 14 – Tomahawk Lake to Alsace Lake with Pilot Knob summit

August 15 – Alsace Lake to Elba Lake

August 16 – Elba Lake to Royce Lakes

August 17 – Royce Lakes to French Lake

August 18 – French Lake to Humphreys Lakes

August 19 – Humphreys Lakes to Piute Lake
August 20 – Piute Lake to Piute Pass Trailhead

 

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This year's trip started at the Piute Pass trailhead west of Bishop on the eastern slope of the Sierra.  The trip visited the same general area we last explored in 1999.  Most of the trip was on the west side of the Sierra Crest, almost entirely within the John Muir Wilderness.  Every camp was between 11,000 and 12,000 feet elevation (Elba Lake is slightly below 11,000 but close enough!)

The trip ended up being tougher than we expected.  The most challenging areas were the saddle between Goethe Lake and Wahoo Lakes, summiting Pilot Knob, and Steelhead Pass.  All had lots of talus, with the last two having sections of very large talus, which was hard to navigate.  There were some class 3 moves required on both of these with the routes we chose, despite both being rated class 2.

Mt. Humphreys (13,992 ft) dominates the entire area, as you will notice by all of the pictures including it.  It was visible every day at some point, even when we weren't too close to it.  We camped right beneath it on our second last night.

Weather was a bit stormy on and off.  The first day we had some sprinkles in the afternoon.  Next two days there were localized dark clouds with some thunder in the distance.  Fourth day clouds built and it started sprinkling around noon.  It was a short day for us so we were at camp shortly thereafter.  It rained all afternoon.  Next day at Royce Lakes there were dark clouds but no rain.  After that the weather cleared out a bit.  Our coldest night was at Humphreys Lakes where it got down to 28F.

We saw marmots, pikas, and chipmunks in various places.  A family of white-tailed ptarmigan was nesting near our campsite at Royce Lakes.  Marmot Lake (where we did not see any marmots) had tadpoles and frogs.

Note that the elevation profile above does not include the climb to the top of Pilot Knob.

Go here to see all of the pictures with the same captions at Google Photos.

 

Map

Below is an interactive map of the trek.  The red track is the main backpacking route, the other track is the Pilot Knob climb.  The green tent symbols are our campsites.  The trailhead is the "P" symbol on the right side.  We did the loop clockwise.

Click here for a full-page version of the interactive map

Click here to download the kml file of the tracks to load into other software like Google Earth