19 May 2025 - Conditions Report: Bishop Pass

We took our first hike to the High Sierra's Crest! Long story short, it's gorgeous out there, but you need to get up early and be very comfortable hiking on steep snow.

Conditions Report: 

Current As Of: May 19, 2025*

Activity During Report: Winter hiking in snow. 

Conditions: 

The road is open all the way to South Lake! The lake's water level is fairly low, and the boat ramp ends above the water at the moment, but there's lots of snow waiting to fill that back up. 

South Lake in the morning.

We left the vehicle at 7AM and started hiking. Almost immediately, you get onto snow which soon turns into 2/3 snow, 1/3 exposed trail. In the morning hours, the snow was firm and even a little frozen. However, with the higher temperatures this week, we expect the snow to stop freezing overnight, especially in the lower elevations. That means, the snow can stay soft around the clock.

The trail just above the South Lake parking lot.

There are tracks all the way, so we never needed to do any route finding.

Once we reached Long Lake, the "trail" was all snow and there were no more open spots. There is some open water at Long Lake and at the Timberline Tarns, above everything is frozen. If you plan on backpacking in this area, you'll have to carry water, bring a stove and enough fuel to melt water, or find the odd open running water.

Long Lake and Mt. Hurd

Above Long Lake, the trail traverses alongside a steep slope. If you are not comfortable with a traverse on steep snow, you can find tracks lower down in safer terrain.

Near the Timberline Tarns, the trail splits up into different variations of hikers' and skiers' tracks, and you are left to choose your own adventure (if in doubt, bring a map and/or GPS)

Just below the final ascent to Bishop Pass, the tracks converge again in a small bowl. This is the spot where we chose to get out the ice axe and strap on some crampons.

It felt reassuring to wear crampons and have an ice axe in hand - a misstep would otherwise lead to an uncomfortable slide. We're using Danner Crag Rat Evo boots, our own Camp rental crampons and a Camp Corsa Nanotech Ice Axe.

This slope is pretty steep and the snowfield is frozen in the morning hours - at this point, it was about 9:45AM. The switchbacks leading up to the pass are still covered and invisible.

At 10AM, we reached the pass in pretty chilly winds, took some photos and turned around - postponing the snack break until out return to the sheltered bowl below.

The route up Mt. Agassiz looks still mostly snow-covered, but the rocks that are sticking out are promising a quick snow melt. 

Mt. Agassiz, seen from Bishop Pass

Looking from Bishop Pass into Dusy Basin, Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park

Mt. Goode's 2nd class route looked half snow-free - being south facing, it has a clear advantage over many other routes. 

Mt. Goode, seen from Long Lake

On the hike out, we started post-holing at about noon, afterwards, the snow got pretty slushy and wet. With this week's high temperatures and warm nights, we expect the slush fest to start as early as 9AM. Snowshoes will be helpful against post-holing then. 

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*All conditions reports are subject to change, increasingly so with each passing day since the observation(s) were made. They are provided as a tool to assist your adventuring, not to replace your own risk management and decision-making. No information in any trip or conditions report published by Eastside Sports should be considered definitive in its information or directive in its recommendation.