FKT: Michelle Campeau, Lexi Arlen - Skier's Sierra High Route (CA) - 2026-03-22

If your goal is to go fast, we can’t recommend this route the week after a historic heat wave. Conditions were tough and travel was slower than expected. That said, it’s a beautiful line and we’ll definitely be back. In fact, if speed is the goal, we’d recommend doing the route once at a slower pace first, since navigation is much easier when you’ve seen the terrain. Moving through unfamiliar ground in the dark adds time and uncertainty. (Huge thanks to Ryan Soares for all the beta, GPX tracks, and motivation for this entire route!)

All that being said, here’s how it went:

We started from Shepherd Pass trailhead at 8:17pm on 3/20/26. The first few miles cruised by on easy dirt trail, with all creeks easily crossed by stepping across on rocks. When we hit the snowline, things got more interesting. After the week of heat, large sections were completely unsupportable, with our skis punching through knee deep or worse. Luckily this section was relatively short, and we soon topped out on Symmes Saddle and transitioned back to trail runners for the dirt descent. Things felt smooth again, and by the time we hit consistent snow near Anvil Camp, it had firmed up nicely. Shepherd Pass was easy in boot crampons, with gloriously no post-holing, followed by a long ski traverse to the Kern River.

After getting water at the Kern, we began the long climb toward Milestone Pass. By this point, the heat had fully taken its toll on the snow, slowing travel significantly. We opted for the boulder field north of the pass rather than skinning up the snowfield. The final ~200 feet to the pass entailed post-holing to our hips in slushy snow above an exposed cliff band, which added a bit of spice. Instead of celebrating on top of Milestone, we looked down into the rock-strewn, completely unskiable, Milestone Bowl. Progress was slow, but we eventually made it through the traverse to the base of No Name Pass. Once again, it was hip-to-waist deep post-holing to the top. Thankfully, we were able to ski off the far side and held a great high traverse line into Triple Divide Pass, arriving at 8pm.

At that point, we reassessed timing and decided to rest before finishing the traverse.

From Triple Divide to Coppermine, the skiing was relatively chill until a fridge-sized rollerball ripped between the two of us. Things were getting hot! At the top of Coppermine, we ran into more non-ideal conditions. The chute we had planned to ski had completely melted out. Knowing the open face to skier’s right ended in a cliff band, we opted to downclimb 50-degree loose rock, one at a time, to minimize rockfall risk (see photo for the pink line we downclimbed). In hindsight, we could have taken the face and traversed skier's left (orange line in photo), but this was not clear from the top. 

But finally, we were through! Horn Col into the Tablelands skied well albeit with some collapsing and cracking before Pterodactyl Pass. We cruised down to Pear Lake and put skins on one last time to get over the final hump. Our last challenge came when a binding got stuck in skin mode, but a ski strap saved the day and we kept moving.

The final miles out were a mix of hiking and reflection. It had been hard, with a good mix of type 1 and 2 fun, but stunning. We finished at 10:01pm on 3/22, somehow nearly 50 hours after we started. We’re already excited to come back and do it again, and could see a case for both pushing for speed or slowing down and luxuriating over a full week to explore the lines we passed along the way.