Pyramid Peak - Rocky Canyon TrailThis was a steeper and shorter route than the one from Horsetail Falls. The accounts and topo maps pointed to a grueling hike without a well defined trail and with lots of brush to whack at.
The trail head, or should I say, the beginning of the trail was up a steep embankment just feet away from highway 50. There was little parking but we found a spot in a sandy shoulder with two other cars (from other groups on the trail), practically across the street from the stream. The trail is a use trail, not maintained or claimed officially, but made usable by hikers using it regularly. There were a few starts to the use trail from the road, some more obvious than others. At least one had a cairn visible from the shoulder of the road, and another trail was marked with a hub cap placed on a rock. All the trail starts we found were 30 yards east of the stream.
We walked up 4,000 feet in 3.3 miles, and it was not climbing on rocks like the route from Horsetail Falls, it was simply a steep (and dusty towards the bottom) hike. There was no bushwhacking to speak of. Only the last bit of the route was rocks, boulders or tallus the size of office furniture to be exact. The summit was beautiful; an entire panorama opened up to us. We couldn't see Desolation Wilderness during the hike, as the forest and mountain blocked our view of everything but Lovers Leap and the Serra Ski Ranch to the south.
There were only a few people on the trail that day; not bad for a Sunday. There was a pair that started with us who were training for Whitney (they had a dog off its leash), a trail runner on his way down from an early summit, a family, ill prepared and barely half way up at 3:30. We also met a pair on the summit that were camping and prototyping their gear for the 1st time at Ropi Lake (Just as we did in June), who told of their tedious route while we flaunted ours.
Here's a gallery with many pictures of our hike
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Pyramid Peak
