Bishop Pass Trail to Dusy Basin ♦

November 17, 2017 tarannosaurus

Epic Travel → North America → The West Coast → Northern California → Eastern Sierras → Lone Pine to Bishop → Bishop Pass Trail to Dusy Basin

♦ Intrepid Top Pick!

Location: West of Bishop, Eastern Sierras/King’s Canyon National Park, California

Distance: 12 miles roundtrip

Elevation Gain/Loss: 2,900 feet

Time Required: 8-12 hours, really nice as an overnight backpacking trip but feasible in a day.

Red Tape/Notes: Leave no trace principles apply; permits are required for overnight trips (quotas are in effect May 1 – November 1, reserve up to 6 months in advance and quotas fill quickly!); if you’re doing an overnight trip, bear canisters are also required. You can find details on the allowed bear canisters here (this is the 2017 list). Hiking project has a nice post on the Bishop Pass trail including a gpx file and driving directions if you’d like more information (the details go beyond Dusy Basin, so just ignore that part if you’re not continuing on) and Bearfoot Theory has a nice guide to the trip as well.

What’s Nearby?: Bishop, North Fork of Big Pine Creek, Bishop Pass Trail to Long Lake

An extended version of the hike to Long Lake, hiking over Bishop Bass to Dusy Basin will take you into King’s Canyon National Park and into some extremely beautiful scenery, with dozens of alpine lakes reflecting imposing peaks. The route from the South Lake trailhead is well marked and easy to follow, passing Long Lake and Saddlerock Lake before reaching Bishop Lake at the bottom of the climb up to the pass. The climb to the pass is also well-marked and easy to follow, with stairs and switchbacks to ease the ascent. You’ll likely hit snow at the top, even in mid-summer – we did this trip at the end of September and there was quite a bit of snow and biting wind (not to mention the temperature dropped to 17° F at night), which urged us down off the pass at a near-run to escape the worst of it. Once you summit, it’s about a mile and a half into the basin, at any easy decline. The trail will pass right by a lake on your left, and we recommend heading off trail here and hiking back to some of the lakes closer to the base of the Palisades, where there are some excellent camping spots.

We only saw two other people crazy enough to be out the weekend we were here last fall, and it was delightful having the place to ourselves. We arrived mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the day hiking around and finding as many of the lovely alpine lakes in the area as possible, and investigated the route up Agassiz Col (we’d like to do a trip up the North Fork of Big Pine Creek, head up over the Palisade Glacier and Agassiz Col, dropping into Dusy Basin and exiting out the Bishop Pass Trail via South Lake…but that’s a trip for another year). We then hunkered down for a night in the freezing cold. I had schlepped my camera gear (including a proper tripod) to do night photography, but when I woke up at midnight, I had zero interest in leaving the relative warmth of the tent for the freezing tundra outside. So I contented myself with taking a few shots in the morning and just enjoying the scenery in daylight, like normal people do. The hike out goes faster than the hike in, with an easy uphill climb from the basin to the pass, and then it’s essentially all downhill and we were out by mid-day. Overall, a truly excellent way to spend a weekend.