Agnew Meadows to Thousand Island Lake (Backpacking)

Agnew Meadows to Thousand Island Lake (Backpacking)

Your destination, Thousand Island Lake, is one of the Sierra’s great beauty spots, a huge—by Sierra standards—sheet of sky-blue water dotted picturesquely with granite islands and situated at the foot of the wild, jagged Ritter Range. The area around Thousand Island Lake is chock-full of more lakes and ponds than you can count, including Thousand Island’s big neighbor, Garnet Lake. There’s spectacular dayhiking, especially for those willing to tackle some easy cross-country travel. Finally, there are three major trail routes you can take to Thousand Island Lake, all of them marvelously scenic, so that getting to and from the lake are joys in themselves. I combine two of the routes into a loop trip here and mention the third under Variations. I describe a favorite dayhike, looping through Thousand Island and Garnet lakes via the saddle between their southwest ends and the John Muir Trail, in the Take this trip! section of trip 46, “Tuolumne Meadow to Agnew Meadows.” Another I highly recommend is ascending to 10,203-foot Island Pass, a little to the north on the John Muir Trail, and enjoying a cross-country ramble around the many little ridges, meadows, and ponds on the interesting plateau east of the pass.

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