Ionian Evolution

August 22–28, 2021
7 days | 73.3 miles | 14,987 vertical feet

I once thought I could do a tighter version of this loop as a two or three night loop. I was wrong

We’d booked a permit online six months in advance, then watched as the summer played out and the fires burned bigger and bigger. The drive down from Oregon carried us through the smoke of the Dixie Fire. A hundred miles away from where we’d laid out our route, the French Fire was threatening to add its particulate matter to the High Sierra air we’d been counting on inhaling. At Mono Lake, the ranger who gave us our permit told us going over Bishop Pass would be like smoking two packs of cigarettes. He was wrong.

We climbed above the trees, beyond the lakes, and into a world of rock that shone beneath blue skies. Smoke hung in the distance, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the ranger had feared. The peaks above us were the Inconsolable Range, but we needed no consolation. We were cruising into the High Sierra, hoping that we’d somehow get a week of clear skies.

Over Bishop Pass, into Kings Canyon National Park and into Dusy Basin. Years ago, I’d dreamed of squeezing this into a day hike, just tagging the pass for a taste of high country before yo-yoing back down to South Lake. That would have been foolish. This was a better introduction to these reaches of the Sierra. It was beautiful and expansive, an all-encompassing mountain landscape that swallowed me up. We dropped below treeline, and then kept dropping to the edge of Le Conte Canyon.