Kaiser Pass Trip Summary

Kaiser Pass travelog #6
Back Home · Sun, 10 Aug 2025, 8:30am

We're back from our quick weekend trip to the Kaiser Pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains. How quick? Well, it started with our Friday Night Halfway in Fresno and finished when we got home late Saturday night. We were out for just over 29 hours. Here's a recap:

Friday night we arrived at our hotel. It's in Clovis, a smaller town adjacent to/a suburb of Fresno. Despite leaving later than I wanted, due to work going long, we got in earlier than I expected, due to traffic surprisingly not being shit on a summer Friday. Maybe it's because school started in many districts this past week and parents aren't taking their kids on weekend trips again yet? Anyway, despite arriving early enough to use the hotel's pool and hot tub we decided we'd rather just stretch out in our room. Partly that's because we used our pool and hot tub, at home, this afternoon.

Saturday morning I awoke with my 7am alarm then just puttered until 8. We didn't leave the hotel until almost 9. I'd have been frustrated about that but we didn't need to hurry. That's the point of Friday Night Halfway: to buy us more time to do things— and not have to rush— on Saturday. I noted as I checked the weather forecast that the high for the day in Fresno would be 106° F. 🥵 (That's 41° C for the rest of the world.) Well, it's a good thing we're not here for Fresno but to drive up into the high mountains. As a rule of thumb the temperature drops 3° per 1,000 feet of elevation, so at 7,000' it should be a warm but not stifling 85°.

Leaving town we stopped at Costco for gas then Del Taco for breakfast. As we got up into the mountains we stopped at a general store in Shaver Lake for snacks.

Our first activity was a drive up a 4x4 road to Kaiser Ridge. We'd already driven to the Kaiser Pass via California 168 and forest road 80. Now we left the pavement behind for another 1.5 miles on a dirt road to the top of the ridge. Up here we were at 10,000 feet with great views down across the Mono Valley of the San Joaquin River and the mountains beyond— or what would have been great views except that there was a lot of smoke in the air.  I joked some time back that when traveling in the West now we need to check not just the weather report but the fire report. It's turning out to be less a joke and more a prophesy. 🤦

Saturday afternoon we drove down the Kaiser Ridge to its far side, the Mono Valley. Why? Because buried deep in there are Mono Hot Springs, a cluster of natural hot springs fed by geothermal activity. There's a small resort there but also a handful of pools that are on Forest Service ground. We hiked a short trail to them and Hawk took a dip.

Late afternoon we stopped to hike Rancheria Falls on our way back down the west side of Kaiser Ridge. We've visited there once before, a few years ago. It was definitely worth visiting again. It was mellow in the late afternoon hours, and the light was perfect.

We got back to Clovis a bit after 7pm. We weren't staying another night, just stopping through for dinner and gas. We'd tried for dinner at a small pizza shop in Shaver Lake, but the staff there warned us the wait was 90 minutes to cook a pizza. We figured we could drive 60 minutes to the Fresno area and still eat sooner than that, plus be 60 minutes closer to home.

The last part of the drive home was late. We finished with dinner and getting gas around 8:15, but then it was over 2 hours home. We were both fading hard. I drove for an hour and a half, then Hawk took the last 45 minutes as I nodded in and out. We got home around 11, unpacked the car, then I took a shower and tumbled into bed.

Heading Up into the Mountains

Kaiser Pass travelog #2
Tamarack Ridge · Sat, 9 Aug 2025, 11am

It was almost 9am when we left our hotel in Clovis this morning. I felt a bit frustrated about the late start, but that's why we stopped here on our Friday Night Halfway— to get a head start on today so we could enjoy the day more. We even got in early enough last night to use the pool and hot tub... but we didn't. We were tired enough that we enjoyed just stretching out in the room.

This morning I flirted with the idea of a morning hot tub dip. I chose instead to fritter around in the room, giving myself an easy start to the day. Then once Hawk was up (she'd slept poorly) we decided it was time to get going. So we left the pool and hot tub at this hotel untouched. That's a shame because they looked nice, and the availability of the pool and hot tub were part of the reason I picked this hotel.

Speaking of which, why Clovis?



Aside from the fact that it bills itself as "GATEWAY to the SIERRAS"— which I suppose is better than its real-life role of "DOORSTEP to FRESNO"— well, it is kind of a gateway to the Sierras. That's what we're using it as, anyway.

And as if rolling from the hotel at almost 9am wasn't bad enough, we made two stops almost right away. First we gassed up at a Costco nearby, then we stopped for breakfast at Del Taco.



The nearby-ness of this Del Taco is another part of why we picked the hotel we did for last night. 🤣 Yeah, we kind of have a thing for Del Taco. We've even made a pilgrimage to the site of the original Del Taco.

From Clovis we headed northeast up into the Sierra Nevada mountains following highway 168. As soon as we turned onto the highway with open views to the east we could see that we were headed into smoke. Actually I could smell it the moment I stepped outside the hotel this morning. But seeing it blanketing the entire horizon east of us, obscuring the Sierra Nevadas, was another thing.

Would we get out of the smoke as we drove further east? Would we climb above it in the mountains as we passed above 7,000', 8,'000', or more? Alas the answer seems to be No.

We stopped again in the town of Shaver Lake, elev. 5,600'. There's a general store we like for snacks. Plus, we needed a bathroom stop. The wildfire smoke continued through here.

Now we're just over the Tamarack Ridge, elev. 7,582', and it's still smoky up here. From here we can see across the next valley to Huntington Lake, with Kaiser Peak, elev. 10,235' rising behind it. Kaiser Peak and all of the mountains loom like ghosts in the smoky distance. Not that it necessarily would've changed out minds this time, but I think we need to start checking the fire report in addition to the weather report when planning our mountain trips. 😰

White Bark Vista in the Kaiser Pass. 4x4ing.

Kaiser Pass travelog #3
Kaiser Pass · Sat, 9 Aug 2025, 12:15pm

The obvious place to go on a trip I've dubbed Kaiser Pass would be the actual Kaiser Pass, right? So that's where we went first on Saturday. Well, first after multiple morning stops for breakfast and gas in Clovis, then snacks at Shaver Lake, and a quick vista at Tamarack Ridge. We drove to Huntington Lake and the end of highway 168 at the foot of Kaiser Peak, the continued up toward Kaiser Pass along forest road 80. From the pass at elev. 9,180' we turned onto Kaiser Pass Trail, aka White Bark Road.

I knew from the trail research I did on Thursday evening that this wasn't really a trail but a 4x4 road, and a not-particularly hard one at that. Our Nissan Xterra laughed at it.



The trail/road traverses a mile up to the top of the ridge then parallels along it a bit to a nice vista point. The first thing that struck us up here, with this far-ranging vista to the east across the John Muir Wilderness, is how smoky it is. 😷 I've cleaned it up a bit in the photo above, but it's frankly kind of distressing up here in real life.

The next photo shows how the mountains in the distance loom like ghosts in the mist.



Those mountains are the eastern crest of the Sierra Nevada. The peaks top out at 12,000' to 13,000'+.

The big lake off in the distance is Lake Thomas A. Edison. I'm not sure if it's named in honor of the inventor or is named for the power company that bears his name in Southern California. Edison, Inc. owns a lot of land up here, and a lot of dammed lakes, for power generation.



We spent a while up here at White Bark Vista climbing around on the rocks. Up here at elev. 9,700' the air is thin. It's no so much catching me out of breath today as it is making me feel dizzy. I've been wobbly on my feet— a bit alarming when I'm scrambling on rocks with a sheer dropoff hundreds of feet to the valley below!

After exploring around the vista for a bit we hopped back in the SUV and explored further out the ridge road. Just past this vista point are signs for the start of the Dusy-Ershim Trail. That name probably means nothing to you, but it was spoken with almost holy reverence by the club of hard-core 4x4ers I belonged to years ago.



I decided to start driving this almost legendary road to see if we could get to the shoulder of Mt. Givens (the one in the distance in the third photo, above). I navigated the first few obstacles on the trail reasonably well. Our stock Xterra made them not-hard with its svelte dimensions. Full-size pickup trucks would face a lot more difficulty. BTW, no I'm not talking about the rocks you can see in the photo above. Those are difficult 1 or 2 on a 1-10 scale. The obstacles I'm talking about are at least 6s.

Before I got very far along Dusy-Ershim I realized I'm not enjoying this very much. I used to enjoy 4x4 driving. The challenge of man plus machine against nature. The beautiful and isolated things I could only see that way— or by backpacking for days, but why do that when I can drive there with air conditioning and a kickin' stereo system? 🤣 But now... I don't know whether it's a getting-older thing, or the smoke in the area that dulls these magnificent vistas, or the lack of camaraderie. Being up here by ourselves and enjoy the solitude is nice, but some things, like 4x4ing, are best enjoyed with others.

We turned back from Dusy-Ershim and headed down to the paved road. There'd be no more 4x4ing today. Besides, we have plenty more stuff on our agenda already!
Coming next: Mono Hot Springs!