Near: Pinecrest
Distance: 36 Miles
Elevation: 6,300 to 10,400 feet
Vegetation: Pine forest and high meadows
Last Visit: August 2020
Quartzite peak is a broad peak along the boundary of the Emigrant Wilderness and Yosemite National Park. The views from the peak are outstanding with a great vantage over Emigrant, Bigelow, and Twin Lakes to the west and many dramatic peaks is Yosemite National Park to the south east. You should only attempt this peak if you're comfortable with some off-trail travel. Easy off-trail travel, but still off-trail. There is no official trail to the summit, but an old mining road is shown on some maps. We found that road and followed it some of the way to the summit, but it's very faint and after a while it's just easier to go cross country up the open slope.
Getting to the final peak is quite a haul. We did this trip as a three day backpack with a camp at Lunch Meadow and a long middle day with only day packs. Another day or two would have brought down the intensity quite a bit. Breaking the trip over more days would be easy to do with excellent potential camps at Relief Reservoir (that could get crowded on Friday/Saturday nights), Emigrant Meadow Lake, Grizzly Meadow, or Snow Lake.
Take note that we saw many bow hunters out in the area around Bond Pass, the pass into Yosemite, so keep your pooch close in that area. Also be ready to run into lots of horses and mules. A pack station at the resort hauls people and their gear up to Emigrant Lake. I have never seen so many mules on any Sierra trail as here. We must of seen around 50 pack animals over the course of the weekend.
Rules
This route is in the Emigrant Wilderness. There is no way your making it as a day hike, so normal backpacking rules apply. A wilderness permit is required for overnight trips, but there is no quota so no need to reserve way in advance. Normally you'd pick it up at a ranger station, but in 2020 we got ours online due to Covid19 restrictions. Dogs OK off leash under voice control. Dogs are NOT allowed in Yosemite national park.
Trailhead
The trailhead for this hike is along the access road to Kennedy Meadows Resort between the resort and CA-108. This makes for a bit of an annoying slog the first half mile or so through the resort area to the trailhead proper. It seemed a lot of people drove their trucks right through the resort, then up the dirt road around the meadow to park just before the wilderness boundary, cutting almost a mile off the hike. It's not clear if this is legal or not...
The main parking area is huge, but it still fills up on weekends so get there early. When we saw how many cars there were we were worried that the trail would be super crowded. It turned out that most of many of these people were day trippers just going the meadow, or as far as Relief Reservoir, and most of the backpackers were going to Emigrant Lake, so we actually had plenty of solitude for most of the trip.
Route Notes
The route follows a very clear, well maintained trail up the surprisingly dramatic canyons of Kennedy and Summit creeks, to several high meadows north and east of the popular Emigrant lake before turning southward to Bond Pass, an entrance into Yosemite National Park. Obviously you can't go past there with a dog, but turning west again here, you can follow the boundary of the park up to Quartize peak.
The route starts with a very flat section through Kennedy Meadow, but quickly starts climbing very quickly up thee canyon of Kennedy creek. I found this section surprisingly more scenic than I expected, with a deep rocky canyon dropping to large cascading stream. Above the canyon, the trail climbs up the hillside overlooking Relief Reservoir, staying well above the water level the whole time. There are some camping spots available along this section on high rocky sections well above the lake and on a lower spit of land on the east side of the lake around half way down. About 5 miles from the car, you pass an intersection with trail leading off into Relief Valley and begin climbing steadily again up the valley between Granite Dome and Relief Peak. The views really open up on this section as you climb higher up the north side of the valley. About 9 miles in the trail reaches a flatter section of Summit Creek called 'Sheep Camp' on some maps. Good campsites near the creek are abundant from here to Lunch Meadow, another mile up the trail. We made camp at a high flat section of ground just east of the little granite ridge that bisects Lunch Meadow.
Past Lunch Meadow, water becomes less reliable and thus your next good camping area will be Emigrant Meadow Lake over Brown Bear Pass. Beyond Emigrant Meadow Lake, I found Grizzly Meadow and the small unnamed lakes/ponds there to be surprisingly nice. The small rocky hills around this area looked like they could offer some good tent sites. I suspect there are some good views to be had from the rocky high ground west Grizzly Meadow, looking down on Middle Emigrant Lake, but we were in the middle of a 15 mile day when we came through here, and had no energy to climbing random rocks off trail...
Bond Pass was decidedly disappointing. I was hoping for some good views into Yosemite here, in case we couldn't make Quartzite peak, but there are just enough trees to block any real views. Thankfully, the peak proved very easy to summit. The old mining road leading up to it branches off from the trail a few hundred yards north of the pass and is easy to miss. The old road is pretty easy to miss the whole way up, frankly. It's not necessary at all to follow the road up, but it does help a little on the ascent if you can follow it because it takes a nice gentle approach avoiding going over some of the rocky lumps between the pass and the peak. The while the summit is pretty broad, the high point is hard to miss, an open chunk of strikingly patterned white and grey Quartizite with outstanding views in all directions.
CalTopo Map: https://caltopo.com/m/HUDR
Photos
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The Kennedy Meadows Trailhead
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Kennedy Meadows
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Entering the Emigrant Wilderness
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The Kennedy Creek Canyon
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A footbridge over Summit Creek
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Summit Creek entering the Kennedy Creek Canyon
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Our lunch spot over looking Relief Reservoir
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Looking back down the valley just below Sheep Camp
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Sunset from our camp at Lunch Meadow. A granite ridge bisects the meadow and is split in a narrow gorge by Summit Creek. Down in that gorge are a few knee-deep pools great for wading after a long hike.
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| Looking back over Lunch Meadow from Brown Bear Pass. |
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The meadow in "Emigrant Meadow Lake" from Brown Bear Pass.
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Emigrant Meadow Lake, with Brown Bear Pass Behind from the pass just before Grizzly Meadow
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Taking a break at Grizzly Meadow
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Summit Meadow with Quartzite Peak and the much pointier Bigelow Peak behind.
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The intersection between the trail and the faint old mining road up Quartzite Peak.
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The meadows just below the peak, looking east towards Bond Pass and Dorothy Lake (in Yosemite)
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One of the many, many trains of pack mules we passed on the trail between Releif Reservoir and Lunch Meadow
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