Estimated time for Sierra High Route

Ryan,

Your conclusions mirror the experience Andrew and I had.

• We would frequently consult Roper’s book and it was invaluable for many difficult stretches.
• Going together – although we originally each planned to go solo – made it way more fun for us and reduced the mental strain of route finding enormously

Yep – going with somebody is definitely better than solo. Also, downloading the kindle version of Roper’s book is a good idea. My hiking partner had his notes on Google docs and set to offline mode which stopped working in the middle of the trail. But luckily we had the Kindle version we could refer to in addition to Skurka’s maps.

Thanks for the info folks.

I’ve been reading and annotating Roper’s book in conjunction with Skurka’s mapset. Will likely just carry the book though.

Any other words from the wise that have been on this route?

My hiking partner was very good at navigation. But, we would get frustrated with Roper’s book. Roper would say things like “this is easy to see or straightforward which way to ascend and descend etc”. It was not very obvious to us starting at the pass:-) So that would lead to some frustration. We didn’t use compass much. I had the route downloaded into my Garmin watch and Caltopo app. I remember Knapsack pass – we thought he asked us to go up the scree field on the left. If I remember correctly, there were two scree fields separated one above the other by talus etc. We tried that and it became sketchy. So then we had to traverse to the right and somehow made it. So, such confusing things will happen all the time. Just don’t get frustrated and take it slow and you will make it. In general, Roper’s book is really really good.

Whitebark pass or maybe it was Blue lake pass was very difficult.  In the sense, you know the difficult passes and you prepare for it mentally like Frozen lake pass (which I thought was not that bad going up or even coming down) etc But, the easy one sometimes gave us the most trouble probably because we were expecting it to be easy and it turned out to be difficult.

Unfortunately I lost all my notes due to the offline crap of google maps. Otherwise I could have shared more.

So, such confusing things will happen all the time.

Yeah, I think by definition beta for stuff like this is going to be problematic; the difference between class 2/3/4 can be a matter of the wrong shelf or the wrong chute, none of it entirely obvious until you’re in it.

My sense is that Roper wants people to have the adventure of route finding for themselves. As a result, his information can be..sparse.

I’ve had limited experience using Roper’s book, and I suck at route finding. So maybe my impression is wrong. Part of it is formed by reading an article in which he loves to knock over ducks on off trail routes. “Figure it out for yourselves!” Again, the few times I’ve used the book, I wished there was more information in terms of the route.

Yeah – you are right. I think he wrestled with the idea of sharing the route in a book.