Lovelady

Joe Petkovich and Skip Lovelady set out for a full day of high altitude hiking in the Bear Valley, CA region of the majestic Sierra Nevada mountain range. Highway 4 was closed just east of Alpine Lake ensuring almost no people in the area. If that was not remarkable enough for mid-June, the reason for the road closure was the unprecedented snow fall this past winter and the utter destruction of many miles of highway 4 up and over Ebbett's pass. This snow fall also left thousands of square miles of the Sierra under many many feet of snow when we arrived. Example: one of the trails we planned on accessing as a means to get to the high country was under well over 10' of snow when we arrived. And that was only at 7100' el. Our plans changed and we scouted some off-trail access points to ridges flanking Mt. Reba (8755' el). The video and pictures below were mostly shot above 8000' and are a composite of three different bushwhacking efforts covering approximately 12 miles, and approximately 2400' of elevation change.