Placeholder Routes & Places

Trip Report    

Highchair Mountain & Bootjack Mountain

I attempted the APPROACH & ASCENT route described above on July 26, 2014.

Trail 1565 is fine from the TH near Black Pine CG up to the point where it crosses a spur ridge 0.6 miles NNE of the Bootjack summit. Beyond there, the trail appears to have not been maintained in more than 10 years. It crosses multiple wildfire burns as it works its way over three more spur ridges. Each year within the burned areas, more silver snags collapse across the path, creating obstacles and routefinding problems. The tread through the burns is littered with debris, making the footing treacherous and the trail difficult to follow. It took me two hours to travel just 2.2 miles to a meadow at 5500' S of Point 6640+ in Highchair's eastern basin, where it disappeared completely. At 1:00pm, at least another 1.5 miles and 1200' away from Highchair's summit, I abandoned the route and worked my way generally N along the ridge system up and over Bootjack, and back to Trail 1565 on the N ridge.

At this time, it appears that the only realistic route to Highchair from Bootjack follows the ridge system S and then WSW between the two summits, which I estimate to be an extra 1.8 miles and 1000' gain beyond the 3.1 miles and 4000' gain to Bootjack.