Route: Kuna Crest Traverse, Yosemite National Park (CA)

This is the FKT for the well-known “Kuna Crest Traverse”, tagging 6 named peaks from Mammoth to Koip, including one of Yosemite National Parks 13’ers, Kuna Peak, over the course of 18 miles. Enjoy this reason to get out into the lesser-visited eastern side of the Yosemite High Country.

The Kuna Crest Traverse has many forms listed on various blogs over the years but Mountain Project lists the Kuna Crest Traverse as an easy 5th class traverse, it describes two starts one from Tioga Road and another from Tuolumne Lodge.  After mapping multiple variations, I think this loop from Mono Pass Trailhead is the most aesthetic (creating a clean loop) and environmentally friendly to the high alpine plant life (by utilizing an existing summit trail up or down from Koip Peak instead of bushwhacking).

Enjoy about 10.5 miles of trail and 7.5 miles of off-trail ridge traversing, ranging from “easy” class 2 all the way up to full-on 5th class at the crux “sawtooth” section between Kuna Crest South and Kuna Peak. (see beta on Mountain Project). One could consider this a little brother to the heinously epic 51 peak link-up known as Convoluted Bliss.

There are many high-points throughout the traverse but the “required” named peaks are as follows:

• Mammoth Peak 12,106’
• Kuna Crest North 12,170’
• Peak 12,090’ 12,090’
• Kuna Crest South 12,202’
• Kuna Peak 13,002’
• Koip Peak 12,962’

Other high-points are encouraged but not required.

Further reading:

Peaksforfreaks.com talks about the Mono Pass Trailhead start/finish for Kuna Peak which, standing at 13’002’, is one of the three 13’000 ft peaks within the Yosemite National Park boundary.  This ridge link up is a great single day way to tag this prominent peak.

Here is a blog that notes easy bailout options from this route

And here is a video from the official Yosemite National Park Service Youtube channel about the amazing flora on these so called “Sky Islands”

Submitted by Jason Hardrath (Follow on IG or FB)