Many trails in the highest Sierra elevations won’t be clear for weeks.
“Some of our highest country is still under 8 to 10 feet of snow,” Randall said.
Farther west along the Sierra crest — such as at Desolation Wilderness, the most-used wilderness area in the nation — the snowpack could remain deep for quite some time, officials said.
“The higher areas will probably have a snow cover well into the summer,” said Don Lane, a recreation specialist with the Forest Service’s Lake Tahoe unit. “A lot of the trails are still covered. All of the high country is buried under ice and snow, and it’s going to take its time to melt out.”
The good news is, we’ll have plenty of drinking water in California this year.
There was lots of snow (some of it still coming down) when I drove over Sonora Pass last weekend. However, in the end it sort of looks like this summer will be much like last summer, when Tioga Pass opened about a week before the end of June.
I was up there right after Tioga opened and I hiked out to Mono Pass. There were some high creeks near the trailhead, but the hike wasn’t bad at all.
Except for the highest passes I expect that most places will be easily accessible by mid-July and many will be accessible weeks before that.
Dan
It’s amazing how much difference a couple of hundred feet in elevation makes. We hiked toward Rainbow Lake in Lassen, starting at about 6,000 ft. At about 6,300′, we started climbing snow drifts as tall as 5′. By the time we climbed to 6,350′, we were on a solid 6′ base of snow. We turned around before getting to Rainbow Lake, and camped at the lower, 6,100′ Snag Lake.