Sonora Peak & Stanislaus Peak

Sonora Pass sits at over 9,600 feet, the second-highest highway crossing in the Sierra, which means the day starts high and only has to gain a few thousand more feet to bag two summits. I started from the St. Mary's Pass side before sunrise, and the early light was worth the alarm — soft pink and orange washing over the ridgeline while the trail climbed through sagebrush and past a scattering of wind-bent pines still in shadow.

The trail up to St. Mary's Pass is easy to follow and gains the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness boundary before opening into a broad, high alpine basin with Sonora Peak visible ahead the whole way. It's a genuine walk-up from there — no scrambling required, just a straightforward push up volcanic scree to the summit at 11,459 feet, marked with a Caltrans survey disk (Sonora Peak also happens to be the highpoint of Alpine County). The views from the top are enormous: Leavitt Peak and the Yosemite high country to the south, Stanislaus Peak and the rest of the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness stretching north, and on this particular day, everything softened by a haze of wildfire smoke drifting in from fires burning elsewhere in the state.

Getting to Stanislaus Peak is a different story. There's no maintained trail — it's a cross-country ridge traverse north from Sonora, dropping and regaining elevation across sandy, undulating terrain before the final approach steepens into loose, blocky rock. The last push to the Stanislaus summit is a genuine scramble, picking a line up sandy, exposed slopes past granite outcrops before topping out on a narrow, rockier summit that feels a lot more rugged than Sonora's rounded volcanic dome. The payoff is a dramatic view straight down a sheer canyon on the peak's north side, granite walls dropping away into a forested valley far below.

The hike back down was its own reward — a small spring cutting through the volcanic slope in a ribbon of yellow wildflowers, then a long, easy stretch through open meadow as the afternoon clouds built up overhead. Two very different summits, in two very different kinds of terrain, without ever leaving sight of the highway.