You’ve no doubt heard of the John Muir Trail, justly known as one of America’s premier hiking trails. Perhaps you have even hiked it (if not, put it at the top of your hiking bucket list). But the JMT is not the only long trail through the heart of the Sierra Nevada. Just 10 miles to its west, the Theodore Solomons Trail parallels the JMT. Starting at Horseshoe Meadows south of Mt. Whitney, it bears west over the Kern drainage, turns north to Mineral King, then keeps to the west sides of Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks as it heads to Glacier Point above Yosemite Valley, 250 miles away.

Along the way it passes through lush meadows and deep forests, crosses big rivers and high passes. Unlike the rock and ice cathedrals of the JMT, the TST is decidedly more montane than alpine. It will take you through the Middle Sierra, a landscape that is much more biologically rich than the world of the Sierra crest. The TST is a much more challenging hike than the JMT. Although the passes are “only” 9,000-11,000 feet high, the valleys are much deeper, some dropping below 5,000 feet. There are plenty of 4k and 5k climbs on the TST.

And then there is the trail itself. You won’t find any signposts directing you to the TST. The route is cobbled together from existing trails. Many of those trails exist only on maps and have not been maintained for decades. The result is a route that is little-traveled. While the Park Service limits JMT passes to 50 hikers a day, the TST faces no such restrictions. Most of the time you’ll have the trail all to yourself. I know of only two hikers who attempted the whole thing in 2019. I was one of them, and I couldn’t hike the complete route.

A Hike on the Theodore Solomons Trail Begins

Cottonwood Pass is the easiest east-side entrance to the High Sierra, and I bounded up the trail, eager to start my TST adventure. The pass yields fine views of the southern Sierra, overlooking the Siberian Plateau, the Kern River gorge and the Great Western Divide beyond. The Divide did not look too snowy, a good omen in this high-snow year.

The hike through Big and Little Whitney Meadows was delightful although marshy. There were fish swimming up and down a trail which was largely submerged in the meadow bottoms. But the Sierra light was out in full dazzling abundance as I crossed the plateau and left the world of planes and cars and pavement behind. A long winding descent brought me to the Kern River, which boomed down its gorge, swollen with the late runoff. Fortunately there is a sturdy bridge here. I lunched on the river bank and then began the first big climb: 4000 feet up to Coyote Pass.

The trail was little used, with only a single set of horse hoof-prints preceding me. I encountered a father and son coming down the trail, both of us surprised to see other hikers. They told me that there were no plausible campsites for miles beyond Coyote Pass, so I grabbed an extra liter of water before the final pitch and called it an early day at the top. Flat sandy sites and outstanding views confirmed the wisdom of this choice.

The trail soon disappeared on the other side of the pass, and I spent hours sidehilling across manzanita-covered slopes to the headwater basin of the Little Kern River. A trail appeared there, but it was well-covered by mountain gooseberry bushes, whose beautiful flowers camouflage sharp thorns. Snowmelt cascades thundered down as I climbed to Farewell Gap. There I strapped on my microspikes, detoured around a huge cornice and plopped myself down for lunch, enjoying views all the way north into Yosemite.

Nearing Mineral King I encountered a hiker who asked if I had enjoyed my hike “Just getting started” I said, “I’m headed to Yosemite”. “Are you hiking the Solomons Trail?”

I was (pleasantly) taken aback. “You’re the first person I’ve met who knows about it”.

It was Jeff Cannon, whom I’d conversed with on the TST Facebook group. An experienced TST hiker, he was out scouting alternate routes.

“Don’t even think about fording the Middle Fork of the Kings. It is way too high” he told me.

That was not the news I was hoping to hear. The Middle Fork of the Kings River, which is typically too high to cross early in the season, once had a bridge, but it washed out in the 1970s and has not been replaced. I was hoping that late July would be late enough to ford the river, but high winter snows and May snowstorms had pushed runoff season back by weeks.

I still had another week. Maybe the river would drop before I got there. Also, I had a plan B: I could follow the Kings up to the JMT, go over Muir Pass, then cut back through Goddard Canyon and over Hell-for-Sure Pass to the TST.

I passed the Mineral King trailhead with its cars wrapped in anti-marmot tarps, pushed over Timber Gap, and strode down the overgrown and marshy trail to Cliff Creek. The creek was high and the light was low, so I elected to camp on the near side in hopes the water would drop overnight.

It did, and was only thigh-deep in the morning. What this portended for the Kaweah River some ten miles ahead was uncertain. But that was a problem for later. The morning’s hike was an easy ramble through beautiful lush dense forests, highlighted by a tour through Redwood Meadows. The “redwoods” are of course Sequoia trees. This grove is not the most extensive, nor are its trees the biggest. But it is very remote. There is plenty of time and space and silence to appreciate these giants. Photos cannot convey what it is like to hike among them, though of course I tried, knowing I would fail.

I reached the Middle Fork of the Kaweah at noon, and spent half an hour thrashing up and down the bank looking for an easier ford. I ended up crossing right where the trail meets the river – although I had one narrow deep channel in the middle to contend with. I braced myself with my hiking poles, stepped over it and enjoyed lunch on the other side.

The Kaweah crossing is at 6200 feet. My next pass, several miles ahead, is at 11,400 feet. The hike up to it is spectacular. The polished granite walls of the canyon sweep up to the Great Western Divide. Dozens of waterfalls plunge back down. Though unnamed and largely unknown, this headwaters canyon made for especially scenic travel, even by Sierra standards. An approaching thunderstorm gave me a good excuse to call it a day at timberline. I pitched my tent on a bench and watched the storms ride up the ridges, thunder echoing off the rock walls.

In the morning I packed up. Storms were building and I still had a couple thousand feet to climb. I followed the mostly nonexistent trail up to the pass, just barely beating the rain. Strapping on my microspikes and throwing on my poncho, I headed down the north face, which was snow-covered for miles. I picked up the tracks of a mountain lion and followed them through the rain, reasoning that it knew the country better than me and would guide me to the valley floor.

The floor itself was a swamp, trout finning down the trail ahead of me. The Roaring River lived up to its name, cascading in sheets over granite domes, then concentrating itself into a gorge. After several challenging fords, the valley opened up and the trail stuck to one side until the bridge near the ranger station led me to the Avalanche Pass Trail.

I was up and over the pass in good time the next morning, headed for my resupply at Cedar Grove in Kings Canyon. The trail down the granite canyon walls is highly engineered, stair stepping down cracks between the exfoliating rock leaves, at other times drilled into the rock itself. It is a wonder in its own right. No doubt it was built in the 1930s, a sort of golden age for our National Parks.

I picked up my resupply box at the Visitor Center and got the latest info on trail and river conditions. The rangers thought that fording the Middle Fork of the Kings would be ill-advised. I expected that. I did not expect the news that avalanches had wiped out the trail between Simpson’s Meadow and the JMT, rendering it impassable. So much for Plan B. I hastily devised a Plan C, which was to text my brother and ask for a ride to the next trailhead north. My text reached him doing yardwork during a heat wave in Southern California, and he was glad to abandon that in favor of camping and fishing in the Sierra.

He dropped me off a few days later at Rancheria Trailhead, and I made several easy miles east to rejoin the Solomons Trail at Crown Valley. Or rather, the Solomons route. That there once was a trail here was confirmed by cuts through rotting deadfalls. Otherwise it was a bushwhack through a soggy valley well-supplied with mosquitoes.

Crown Pass, at the head of the drainage, is an unknown jewel among Sierra passes. The views south extend over lakes and lush forests to the Kern-Kings Divide, while to the north I could make out the distinctive outlines of Ritter and Banner peaks in the Minarets Wilderness east of Yosemite. I followed the faint trail down to the North Fork of the Kings and found it running at only a few percent the volume of its sister forks, making for a deep but easy ford across a sandy bottom.

The established trail down the North Fork valley was a delight, the river gathering force with each feeder stream and dropping from run to pool to run over granite ledges. Each pool was filled with rainbow trout eager to rise to a dry fly, slowing my pace but deepening my enjoyment of this beautiful canyon. A camp on the shore of dome-rimmed Courtright Reservoir was followed by a climb into the high country of Dinkey Lakes Wilderness, where a string of alpine lakes invited me to fish, swim, flower-gaze, and otherwise dawdle. The trail led on to Rock Meadows, its deep green a handsome contrast to the gray and white ridges behind.

I arrived bright and early the next morning at Badger Flats and the highway down to Huntington Lake, my next resupply. Although I stood by the road I didn’t stick out my thumb, because not a single car passed in an hour of waiting. But a pair of ranch hands were fixing the trailhead corral. They finished up and called me over for a ride to town, where I secured my resupply box, a cabin, a shower, a beer, and a burger in short order. After an hour and a half of futile hitching the next morning (three cars passed), I accepted my fate and hoofed it the 3 miles/1000 feet back up to the trailhead and commenced the pleasant climb to Potter Pass up a well-used trail. The views of the Sierra crest were, once again, outstanding.

I began my descent to the South Fork of the San Joaquin River on an increasingly faint trail. I wound my way down through the hot dry forest to Rattlesnake Crossing, which features deep green pools perfect for swimming and a sturdy metal suspension bridge. I took full advantage of both, and began my climb out of the gorge and into the country spanning the forks of the San Joaquin. Crumbling retaining walls that once supported switchbacks led into impenetrable groves of manzanita. I abandoned the nominal route and clambered to the rim up a couloir filled with basaltic talus.

The route went downhill from there, but not in a good way. Cuts through ancient deadfalls confirmed that I was on the trail marked on the map, but they were the only evidence of that trail. My mistake was to stick to the nominal route, which leads through valley and gully bottoms. That is where the thickest, scratchiest vegetation is found. I would have done better to follow the rocky ridges to the east – more climbing and scrambling, but less beating through dense understory.

In all, it took over a day to make the 15 miles to the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin. Cassidy Bridge marks the low point of the TST at 4600 feet, and leads to a delightful shady beach fronting another excellent swimming hole. A fully-clothed dunk was in order. The low elevation, bright sun, and shadeless granite walls of the gorge made for an exceedingly hot climb out. But the breezes increased with the elevation, and so did views of Balloon Dome nearby and the cool Sierra crest beyond.

The Final Stretch

I set out early from the Clover Meadows Campground the next morning, hoping to clear both Fernandez and Merced passes and camp in the Yosemite basin. Following a well-maintained trail, I passed many cars at the Fernandez Trailhead lot and made my way to Vanderburgh Lake. The lake itself was a full-on campground scene, complete with smoky morning campfires and little yappy dogs. But hey, everyone was having a good time by a beautiful lake in a pleasant forest. Most people are sensible enough to realize that you don’t have to climb giant steep passes or crash through miles of untrailed forest to enjoy the wilderness. Most people.

The climb to Fernandez Pass was astonishingly beautiful. The range it sits in, which separates the Merced from the San Joaquin drainages, juts out to the southwest and yields an uninterrupted view of the west flank of the Sierra Crest, all the way from the Minarets down to the Kaweah Divide. The whole bowl of the San Joaquin drainage lies below, receiving the snowmelt of the crest and channeling it into mighty canyons of granite. A fine view, indeed. It put the hike into perspective and gave me a chance to be grateful to be here and to be able to do this whole hard crazy hike.

I left my camp on Illilouette Creek shortly after dawn and began striding down the good trail along the creek. It bubbled merrily along under Sierra blue skies, making its way toward the rim of Yosemite at exactly the right pace, neither hurrying nor hanging back. I stopped for a break at a pool that gathered several more channels to make their final run together. I gave a thought to catching some of the fish finning lazily about, but today it seemed more appropriate to leave the fish in peace. I settled for a snack and a final bit of Sierra serenity of my own.

The back side of Half Dome soon appeared, rising like a giant smooth inscrutable spacecraft over the forested ridge. The trail orbited around the axis of the dome, bringing its narrow side profile into view. Vernal Falls and then Nevada Falls appeared along with the Little Yosemite corridor up to Tuolumne Meadows. The full Ansel Adams portrait of Yosemite slowly swung into place as I reached the classic Glacier Point viewpoint. I navigated through the crowds, the odd fish among schools of motorized tourists, found the prime selfie point and considered my hike at an end.

I marched back to the little store, grabbed a cold soda, got in the long line to pay and heard the call “Hey hiker trash!” from a grinning youngster passing by, one who had not seen the inside of a barber shop for some time.

Busted once again, guilty as charged.

Need to Know

Information

The 250-mile TST is named for Theodore Solomons, an early European-American explorer of the Sierra Nevada. Solomons was the first to advocate a trail that would run the length of the High Sierra – the trail now known as the John Muir Trail. Besides the TST, he is memorialized by Mt. Solomons, a 13er that appropriately overlooks Muir Pass on the JMT.

No permits are needed to hike the TST per se, but the trail passes through three national parks which do require permits, and Cottonwood Pass has a daily entry quota. A permit good for the entire trail can be obtained at the Eastern Sierra Interagency Visitor Center two miles south of Lone Pine on Highway 395. Bear canisters are required for the National Parks, and can be rented there.

Resupplies by mail are possible at the Silver City Resort a few miles below Mineral King, the Cedar Grove Visitor Center in Kings Canyon, and the Lakeshore Resort in Huntington Lake. Call or email to confirm that they will hold your package. Cedar Grove has a store with freeze-dried meals and other hiker supplies, and you could do a decent resupply there. Huntington Lake also has a store but it is geared toward car campers (mostly canned and junk food). There is no TST trail association. Most hikers take two weeks or more to complete the trail, and this is one trail where I appreciated long pants.

Getting There

The southern terminus at Horseshoe Meadows is best accessed from Lone Pine, CA. One can fly to Mammoth or Reno and take an ESTA bus south, or fly to an LA-area airport, take the MetroLink train to Lancaster, and then take the ESTA bus north. Several shuttle services from Lone Pine to the trailhead are available. Lone Pine Kurt does a fine job and can advise you as to the best travel options to get to Lone Pine. The Mt. Whitney Hostel in Lone Pine provides inexpensive clean lodgings and has an outfitter store where you can get stove fuel (prohibited on airplanes) and other last-minute supplies, and also rent bear canisters. One can reach or depart the northern terminus from Yosemite Valley via YARTS busses, connecting to airports at Fresno, Merced, and Mammoth.

There is no shuttle from the TST terminus at Glacier Point to Yosemite Valley. and it's a 4.5 mile/3000 foot descent to Yosemite Valley. You can stay one night at the backpackers camp in Curry Village, no reservation required.

Best Time to Go

The Middle Fork of the Kings typically runs high late into the season. In many years rivers start to recede from runoff levels in late August to early fall. In my case I found a detour was necessary, which could be the case at any time of the season. Fall storms become more likely as the season progresses. You can check in with ranger stations for up to date information and current conditions.

Maps and Books

There is an excellent TST map bundle, laid out and annotated by Mario Caceres. It is available at Avenza Maps. The maps are GPS-enabled and include elevation profiles and alternate routes. Both the maps and the Avenza app are free to download. Search for “TST” from the Avenza home page. The maps are suitable for printing if that is your preference (I used the app and the printed maps). The TST is also covered by:

• Trails Illustrated map 205 Sequoia/Kings Canyon
• 810 Shaver Lake
• 809 Mammoth
• 309 Yosemite SE
• 306 Yosemite SW

These maps do not annotate the TST and may show trails that no longer exist. A Hiking Guide to the Theodore Solomons Trail by Gary Buscombe is still in print, but it dates from 1983 and is more useful now as a general description rather than a trail guide.

Editor's Note: This article by Drew "HappyHour" Smith originally appeared in Issue 47 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here for additional photos and content.