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Climbs of Milestone Mountain and Midway Mountain along the Great Western Divide, two of the more remote points in the High Sierra. The trip entailed over 40 miles and the duration was just over 17 hours, starting at 2:50 am and finishing up just before 8 pm as the light was fading. Milestone Creek and Basin are exceptionally scenic with lovely alpine lakes and tarns, polished granite, and the towering peaks of the Great Western Divide. The quartet of Thunder-Table-Midway-Milestone is an intriguing objective and it wouldn't hurt to have some acclimation beforehand!

I posted a trip report with many more photos and details that may be of interest.

Awesome. What a nice mental break from all the crap on my desk. I had intended on climbing both Milestone and Midway a couple of summers back but, with a big pack on my back, they seemed really far away from Shepherd's Pass. Thank for reminding me that I still need to get back there.

Another classic, Leor. Excellent performance!

Wonderful photos and report! It takes a fast, lean, and strong body to do that trip in one stretch - good job. Milestone and Midway are near the top of my list for next summer - of course, I'll be watching the sunrise and sunset a few times in the backcountry when I do them.

Pantilat wrote:The quartet of Thunder-Table-Midway-Milestone is an intriguing objective and it wouldn't hurt to have some acclimation beforehand!

You inspired Sean to give it a go: Milestone/Midway/Table/Thunder, in just under 20hrs.

Spectacular scenery! You are a beast! Congrats on a tough accomplishment.

Enjoyed looking through the images on your cascadeclimbers.com site. Surprisingly good aesthetic results for someone traveling so quickly, that obviously required a fair amount of deviations from your main route. These were my favorites:

castle07.JPG
castle09.JPG

Impressive super accomplishment for a dayhike, congrats. I recently revisted the idea of going up Shepherd Pass and into some of those areas including Milestone. I'm one that prefers the timberline areas where there are still good numbers of foxtail pines instead of the highest barren zones. There are certainly many yet to be discovered superb windswept gnarled trees no one has ever photographed in those remote landscapes.

Actually I recently did capture an image of all those areas you traveled by foo though with little effort haha. And posted here on summitpost:

http://images.summitpost.org/original/746683.jpg

Click to go big. At upper far right, Midway Mountain is coded as MwM and Milestone Mountain MsM.

David
http://www.davidsenesac.com