Highland Peak 10,937′, Highland Peak South 10,820′, Silver Peak NE 10,812′ and Silver Peak SW 10,775′
Sierra Nevada
Total Time: 8:20
Distance: 15.9 miles
Elevation Gain: 5,150′
Crux: Class 2
Trailhead: Ebbetts Pass- pit toilets
They say the best mountaineers have the worst memories. I was less than a week off a brutal dayhike of Mount Cotter, easily one of my top five worst days in the mountains. Yet I had another day off that I wouldn’t dream of wasting, and although my blisters weren’t exactly healed, at least I could ambulate on them without much pain. I decided to give myself an easier day, settling on Highland Peak off Ebbetts Pass. With the summit just under 11,000′ and only 12 miles roundtrip, it would be one of my easier SPS Peaks in a long time, with the time saved by the shorter hike offset by the 3.5 hour drive each way. Because of this, I drove up the night before, sleeping in my car in a Snow Park closed for the season and finishing off the drive just before sunrise. Ebbetts Pass was the last paved Trans-Sierra pass I had yet to visit, and was characterized by the more volcanic craggy rock more typical of the northern part of the range. The day hikers lot is just off the pass, with a short spur bringing me to the PCT. I followed this south, following switchbacks and dropping several hundred feet into Noble Canyon, Highland Peak just across the canyon to the southeast.
To the north of Highland Peak were the twin summits of Silver Peak, and I hoped to tag them as well if my feet held up- although realistically it would take alot for me to NOT add them on. It took me a little over an hour to hike the four miles to Noble Lake, a single tent camped along the shores still asleep at the early hour.
A use trail for Highland leaves the PCT at the inlet of the lake, and I was able to follow it briefly before losing it in a wet meadow and patches of snow. I would find and lose it intermittently as it traversed beneath point 9741′, eventually cutting steeply upslope to its connecting saddle with Highland Peak.
Although the summit of Highland Peak was only a mile and a half further, it was still another 1700′ of elevation gain. There was a use trail for much of it, however it was mostly volcanic sand, with very little solid rock until closer to the summit. I stopped halfway up the ridge when I found a pocket of service to Facetime Avery while she had breakfast, then continued along to the lower southern summit of Highland Peak at 10,820′, taking a little under 3 hours to tag the first summit of the day with a break for Facetime part ways.
The higher north summit of Highland Peak was only about 3/4 of a mile further and looked quite close, but it still took me another forty minutes to drop several hundred feet across the connecting saddle and scramble up to the high point. Considering I feel like I have explored less of the northern part of the Sierra, I was pleased to be able to pick out all of the major summits in view- Stanislaus and Leavitt to the south, Black hawk and Dardenelle Cones to the southwest, Mokelumne to the northwest, Roundtop to the north and Freel to the north-northeast.
Using Freel and Mount Tallac, I was able to place the hole in the mountains where Lake Tahoe would be, although I couldn’t see the lake itself. I had been the first to sign into the register on Mount Cotter for the year the week before, and I was not surprised to see a number of names before mine in 2025, a fairly popular peak being so close to Ebbetts Pass with a use trail the majority of the way. I had made decent time and my feet were still holding up, so I saw no reason not to continue on the ridgeline to Silver Peak, the closer southern summit being slightly shorter than the true summit a touch further north. It was steep talus dropping off the north side, decent use trails working around gendarmes and short cliff bands to the broad and sandy connecting saddle, dropping nearly 1,000′ in about 15 minutes.
I would need to regain the bulk of that elevation loss to climb Silver Peak, following the ridge and skirting some craggy towers to the right just below the summit. It took a little over 30 minutes from the saddle to reach the lower southwest summit, and another 15-20 minutes to drop to the intervening saddle and up to the higher northeast summit.
Looking out to the east I felt like I was more on a high desert summit, with scrub and brush extending from the summit down towards the Great Basin desert just over the border in Nevada. I had a couple options for my return to the trailhead. The easiest would be to drop off the summit more or less directly into Noble Canyon and hike directly out to the highway. This would put me about 4 road miles from my car, but I might be able to hitch hike back to the trailhead. However, if I couldn’t hitch a ride, it wouldn’t definitely be the longer choice. The other option, and the one I ultimately landed on, was to descend the same ridge and drop into Noble Canyon closer to the PCT, following the Noble Canyon trail to its PCT junction and hike this back to the car. This would save me from hitchhiking, although my main concern was finding a brush free descent into Noble Canyon, the memories of my descent of Gardiner Creek too fresh. I dropped off the summit, skirting the lower southwest summit along its eastern slopes and finding some decent sand to boot ski down (although with one slip off a moving rock that left a gash across my buttcheek). Once back at the broad saddle between Highland and Silver, I started looking for a line to drop back into Noble Canyon. Moving around pockets of boulders, I found a perfect line of sand, plunge stepping down several hundred feet quickly into the canyon.
I was able to follow the sand about half way down until pockets of aspen and brush started to appear. I was able to largely avoid the brush by traversing slopes to the north when needed, eventually dropping into the pine forest that paralleled a small unnamed stream to my left. It was about 12:15 when I reached the Noble Canyon trail, taking about 1.5 hours from the higher summit of Silver Peak. I stopped to filter some water, having not filter anything since the inlet of Noble Lake hours before.
I now had my work cut out for me, the remainder of the hike largely uphill to hit the junction with the PCT followed by a climb out of Noble Canyon back to Ebbetts Pass. The climb back to the PCT took longer than I expected, thinking I had dropped into the canyon a bit closer to the PCT than I actually had, and it was another 30 minutes of uphill hiking to the junction. From there it was a little over 2.5 miles and ~700′ of gain back to the trailhead.
I covered that distance in about an hour, getting me to Ebbetts Pass a little before 2 PM, which would ultimately get me home just in time for dinner. Somehow my easy day was still about 16 miles and over 5,000′ of elevation gain…. but for better or worse I had no days off on the horizon with plenty of time to recover for my next outing.
