Madera Peak

Madera Peak 10,509′
Sierra Nevada
Total Time: 8:30
Distance: 11(ish)
Elevation Gain: 3,500′
Crux: Class 3
Trailhead: Norris TH, no services
Companion: Holly

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Note: I forgot my GPS for this trip, so miles and elevation gain are approximations based off other trip reports.

Madera peak is the southernmost 10,000 foot summit in the Clark Range and the only one that reaches that threshold to fall outside of Yosemite National Park. Although it does not have the same protection as the nearby summits further north in the range, it’s isolation at the southern tip of the range affords outstanding views to the south to Kaiser Peak in the San Joaquin River drainage. I had recently been near Madera Peak when I climbed Redtop, Sing, and Gale Peaks, although decided to leave Madera Peak for another day, thinking it would be a good outing to do with Holly. With a free weekend day, and fully acclimated from our recent thruhike of the John Muir Trail, we left home starting up Beasore road out of Bass Lake. Unfortunately, a bridge was right out near the Jone’s Store causing a good hour and a half detour south to Mammoth Pool Road and Minarets Highway just to swing north again. Because of this, we started quite a bit later than planned, putting us in risk running into afternoon lightning storms. The trail for the Norris Lakes Basin had also been moved since the older map that I had downloaded, and we had to walk the last mile of road to reach the former trail head.

The trail dove into lush forest, and we followed a thinly running stream as we slowly ascended through the pines. There was quite a bit of downed wood, likely secondary to the unfortunate beetle infestation that has spread throughout the West Coast forests. It wasn’t long before we reached the first small lake, Norris Lake, and we sat down near the shore for our first break of the day, watching a family of ducks bobbing along the shore.

The second lay, Jackass Lake, was far larger and we reached it after under a mile of hiking from Norris. There were several families enjoying the lake jumping off of short cliff bands, a nice escape from the summer heat down in Fresno.

Because of our late start it was already lunchtime when we reached the lake, and we ate half of our packed sandwiches before continuing on. We reached the junction that led to Upper Jackass Lake, and the trail changed dramatically from a slow gradual incline to an all out ascent uphill, lacking any real switchbacks. I commented that the trail makers sort of gave up on building the trail trying to reach the upper lake, with parts being simply cairns or nothing better than a game trail.

We took one more break at the upper lake and end of our trailed section of the ascent, the rest of the route being cross-country. We started up steep talus slopes to the west of the lake in hopes to reach the main north-south ridge line of Madera Peak. I decided we could try for an ascending traverse to the north in order to avoid some of the fall summits. However, several intervening ridgelines made this a bit less practical than I had hoped, and as we reached one basin above a final upper unnamed lake, we decided to cut up to the ridgeline and stay high the rest of our route.

It was at this point that we began to notice some thunder clouds forming from both behind us in the San Joaquin River drainage as well as north, deeper into the Clark Range. We finished our late lunch at the ridgeline and sat there deciding whether to risk a possible incoming storm. The summit at this point was less than 1 mile away, however there were many intervening false summits and plenty of talus hopping in between. After watching it for about 15 minutes, it seemed like the storm in the San Joaquin Drainage was staying put, and the clouds above the Clark Range were moving in the opposite direction. We decided to go for it. I quickly remembered that Holly does not enjoy talus hopping as much as I do, and she struggled through the uneven terrain, much happier on the smooth trail below.

It was because of these large boulders and talus we needed to scramble through that slowed our pace considerably, and it took us over an hour to reach the summit from our last resting point, climbing up into a band of dark black rock just below the high point. I grabbed the summit register to sign us in, finding nearly daily entries since the summer began, a very popular peak particularly with the limited access to Yosemite national Park this year. With our lunches already eaten, we only spent a small amount of time on the summit, watching the storms to the south of Kaiser Peak, as well as some more distant thunder cells in upper Yosemite National Park.

For our descent, Holly commented that she did not want to reverse a route through the talus hopping, and it looked like we could cut down to Burro Lake to the southeast of the summit. For the record, I never claimed that this would be a faster option, just that it would have less talus hopping. We headed down a more direct line towards Burro Lake, slowly working down loose talus and scree before reaching several small bands of slabs and cliffs just above the water.

When we reach the lake, we were surprised to see it not only filled with tadpoles, but at least five garter snakes that swam around after them with their mouths wide open hoping to catch one. We watched them with amusement for a good 10 minutes, never seeing any of the snakes catch an unlucky tadpole.

We continued along the lake drainage, utilizing use trails to reach the upper most unnamed Jackass Lake where we encountered some campers. When we asked them about the trail down to the named upper Jackass Lake, they remarked that they lost the trail on their way up. We would suffer the same fate on the way down. Although we initially found a cairned route at the outlet of the lake, we lost this in cliff bands and brush, leading to our last bit of cross country to reach upper Jackass Lake at the end of the day. It was much smoother sailing once we were again on trail to reach lower Jackass Lake, with the families we had witnessed swimming previously setting up camp for the night.

We did not bother to take a break at this larger lake on the return, and paused only briefly at Norris Lake on our descent for one final stop. Once we were passed the final lake, we hightailed it back to the car, knowing we had the extra long detour just to get home. Reaching the car, we decided the summit and detour deserved a trip to Pizza Factory in North Fork on the way home, and we peeled out to enjoy our earned post-summit pizza.