Muah Mountain P1K SPS / ESS

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The hike out to Pickering the day before had been a tougher outing than I had planned for, and at the end of the Challenge I wanted sleep and then an easy day. So I decided to do something underambitious with a short outing to Muah Mountain. The peak lies just east of the Sierra Crest and south of Mt. Langley in the Golden Trout Wilderness. Its inclusion on the SPS list is a bit of a mystery to me considering its relative insignificance, but it was also the sole motivation for my visit to it.

I started from the Horseshoe Meadow picnic area, heading south across the meadow in search of a trail. On the far southeast side of the meadow I picked up the trail that my map indicated I would, and followed this to Mulkey Pass and the PCT. A fire was burning in the Golden Trout Wilderness ten miles to the south near Strawberry Meadows west of Olancha Peak and it was obscuring much of the views south of Mulkey Pass including Muah Mtn. My pictures of a weak peak would themselves be weak. Though not grand by Sierra standards, the area around Muah Mtn is scenic with green meadows and forests. Were it not for the fire burning to the south, it would make a lovely transitional viewing area, as the range quite suddenly transforms from the High Sierra represented by Mt. Langley to the north, to the more subdued peaks and valleys of the Southern Sierra to the south. There was no particular route-finding issues once I decided to leave the PCT, and no difficult scrambling, though several false summits made it take longer than it seemed it should. The false summits were roundly condemned by a number of entries in the register I found at the summit. I stayed about 20 minutes before returning by nearly the same route. I briefly considered climbing Trail Peak on the way back, but it seemed too much work for another mediocre peak at the time. An abundant snow year allowed the wildflowers to continue blooming late into August, and I stopped at several locations to revel in them and capture them in pictures. The whole outing took five hours to complete, certainly the easiest day I had had in the last 14 days.

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