Yosemite High Sierra Camps Loop
Yosemite National Park · near Tuolumne Meadows / Lee Vining · Sierra Nevada / Yosemite
Hiking
At a glance
- Difficulty
- strenuous
- Route type
- loop
- Distance
- 49 miles
- Elevation gain
- 8,100 ft
- Time needed
- multi-day · long-haul
- Best season
- July–September
Permits and booking
- Permit required
- Yes
- How the permit works
- Yosemite wilderness permit via Recreation.gov, lottery 24 weeks ahead by entry trailhead (May Lake, Sunrise Lakes, Glen Aulin, etc.). Bear canister required. The famous catered tent-cabin camps run a separate, extremely competitive lottery — most backpackers do the loop self-supported.
- How hard the permit is to get
- 4 of 5
What is here
- Features
- Yosemite's high country grand tour · Six alpine camps: Glen Aulin, May Lake, Sunrise, Merced, Vogelsang, Tuolumne · Cathedral Range & Tuolumne · Waterfalls & granite domes
Worth knowing
- Dogs
- Not permitted
- Good for a first timer
- No
Hiking detail
- Nights
- 4–6
- Resupply
- None needed. Bear canister/bear boxes required. (The catered camps themselves are lottery-only and separate; backpackers use the adjacent backpacker campgrounds.)
- Intl tip
- You can hike the loop in either direction and start from several trailheads — May Lake and Sunrise Lakes are popular starts. Going clockwise from Tuolumne saves the dramatic Vogelsang high country for a strong finish. Even self-supported, you can sometimes buy a meal at a camp if you reserve ahead, a welcome luxury mid-trip.
The guide
The High Sierra Camps Loop is the grand tour of Yosemite's high country — a roughly 49-mile circuit through the Cathedral Range…
In the Guidebook
Everything above is yours for free. The written guide to Yosemite High Sierra Camps Loop — what it is actually like, and what we would tell a friend before they went — comes with the Guidebook.
Getting there
- Coordinates
- 37.877, -119.34