Everyone has a list. Most of them are the same list, reordered, with no reasoning attached. So before naming ours, here's how we got there.
We scored trails on five criteria, weighted by what actually matters when you drive four hours to walk somewhere:
Scenic drama — 35%. Vertical relief, rock architecture, how much big country you can see at once. The single heaviest factor.
Water — 25%. Number of lakes, their color, how close the trail brings you to them.
Reward per mile — 20%. How soon the scenery starts. A trailhead at 10,000 feet that opens onto a lake basin in twenty minutes beats a four-mile approach through timber.
Access — 10%. Road condition, drive time off Highway 395, parking, and whether a day hike needs a permit.
Solitude — 10%. Whether you can find quiet, or whether you're in a procession.
Each trail scored 1 to 10 per criterion. The math produced one result we didn't expect, which we'll get to.
All five are day hikes. All five are in the Inyo National Forest. None of them require a permit if you're going out and back in a day. Overnight is a different story, covered under each trail. Season is roughly July through October; before July you're likely on snow at the passes, and after October you're gambling on the first storm.
5. Piute Pass — 7.35
Trailhead: North Lake, 9,345 ft. From Bishop take CA-168 west about 18 miles, then right on North Lake Road for two miles of narrow dirt. The parking is a mile below the trailhead and it fills early.
Distance: 7.0 miles round trip to Piute Lake; 9.6 miles to the pass. Elevation gain: 1,631 ft to Piute Lake; 2,078 ft to the pass at 11,423 ft. Permit: None for day hiking. Overnight requires an Inyo NF wilderness permit through Recreation.gov; bear canister required.
Lakes: Loch Leven at 10,750 ft, about three miles in, then Piute Lake at 10,958 ft.
Peaks in view: Mount Humphreys, 13,986 ft, dominates everything. It's the highest point on the Sierra crest north of the Palisades and it looks the part — a blunt tower that doesn't resemble the peaks around it. Mount Emerson and the Piute Crags line the north side of the canyon.
Why it's here: Cross the pass and Humphreys Basin opens up, thousands of acres of high tundra dotted with lakes and almost no trees. It's the most open, least claustrophobic country on this list. It scores lower than the others only because you work three miles before the payoff, and the access road tests your patience.
4. Bishop Pass — 7.80
Trailhead: South Lake, 9,768 ft. From Bishop, CA-168 west about 15 miles to South Lake Road, then seven miles south. Paved the whole way.
Distance: 4.6 miles round trip to Long Lake; 11.1 miles to Bishop Pass. Elevation gain: About 1,000 ft to Long Lake; 2,152 ft to the pass at 11,972 ft. Permit: None for day hiking. Overnight permits through Recreation.gov; this is a popular quota trailhead, book early.
Lakes: Long Lake at 10,758 ft is the centerpiece and only two miles in. Beyond it, Spearhead, Saddlerock, and Bishop Lake step up toward the pass. The Chocolate Lakes loop and Treasure Lakes both branch off this trail if you want variations.
Peaks in view: Hurd Peak, 12,237 ft, stands over the west side of Long Lake. Mount Goode, 13,085 ft, closes the south end of the basin. From the pass you look down into Dusy Basin and across to the Palisades.
Why it's here: The best paved-road access on this list and a genuinely great lake at two miles, which makes it the easiest of the five to turn into a short day. It loses points on solitude — this is one of the busiest trailheads out of Bishop, and in August you will not be alone.
3. Kearsarge Pass — 7.85
Trailhead: Onion Valley, 9,185 ft. From Independence, take Onion Valley Road west 13 miles. It's paved, steep, and switchbacked; give yourself 30 minutes from 395 and don't ride your brakes coming down.
Distance: 10 miles round trip to the pass at 11,760 ft. Elevation gain: About 2,660 ft. Permit: None for day hiking. Overnight permits through Recreation.gov; this is a major John Muir Trail resupply route and quotas go fast.
Lakes: Five of them, strung up the climb — Little Pothole, Gilbert at 10,400 ft, Flower, Heart, and Big Pothole sitting in a bowl below the trail near the top.
Peaks in view: University Peak, 13,640 ft, fills the southern sky from Gilbert and Flower Lakes and stays with you the whole climb. At the pass the Kearsarge Pinnacles come into view, and beyond them the country drops away into Kings Canyon National Park.
Why it's here: Standing on Kearsarge Pass is one of the best five minutes available to a day hiker in California. You've climbed the east side, and the west opens up in a single step — Bullfrog Lake, the Kearsarge Lakes, the whole Sierra interior. The 2,660 feet is real work at altitude and that's what keeps it out of the top two.
2. Big Pine Lakes (North Fork) — 8.30
Trailhead: Big Pine Creek, about 7,800 ft. From Big Pine, take Crocker Street west; it becomes Glacier Lodge Road and runs about ten miles to the end. The day-use lot fills by seven in the morning on summer weekends. Arrive early or park low and walk.
Distance: 10 miles round trip to Second Lake. 18 miles if you push to the Palisade Glacier overlook, 22 if you take in all seven lakes. Elevation gain: About 2,500 ft to Second Lake; roughly 4,800 ft to the glacier. Permit: None for day hiking. Overnight requires a wilderness permit at entry point JM23 — Big Pine Creek North Fork — through Recreation.gov, released six months out. It is one of the hardest permits to get in the range.
Lakes: Seven, numbered rather than named. First and Second Lake are the famous ones, and their color is the reason: glacial flour suspended in the water turns them a hard turquoise that doesn't look like anything else in the Sierra. Third through Seventh continue up the basin.
Peaks in view: Temple Crag, 12,999 ft, stands over Second Lake and is one of the great rock faces in the country — a thousand feet of buttresses and gullies that climbers have been working out routes on for a century. Behind it sit the Palisades: North Palisade at 14,242 ft, Mount Sill, Mount Gayley. The Palisade Glacier is the southernmost glacier in the United States.
Why it's here and not first: It scores a perfect 10 on both scenery and water. Nothing else on this list touches it for a single view. But you walk five miles and climb 2,500 feet before you get it, and the parking situation is the worst on the list. If you only care about the most dramatic thing you can see in a day, go here and ignore the ranking.
1. Little Lakes Valley — 8.85
Trailhead: Mosquito Flat, 10,244 ft — the highest road-accessible trailhead in the Sierra Nevada. From Tom's Place on Highway 395, take Rock Creek Road about ten miles to the end. Paved. The lot fills by mid-morning in summer.
Distance: 7.3 miles round trip to the Gem Lakes. Shorter turnarounds at every lake along the way. Elevation gain: About 1,100 ft over that whole distance, which is nothing for this terrain. Permit: None for day hiking. Overnight permits through Recreation.gov; Mosquito Flat is a quota trailhead and popular.
Lakes: More per mile than anywhere else in the range. Mack, Marsh, Heart, Box, and Long Lake come one after another, then Chickenfoot, and the Gem Lakes at the head of the valley.
Peaks in view: A wall of them, and you're looking at it from the parking lot. Bear Creek Spire at 13,713 ft anchors the head of the valley. Mount Dade, Mount Abbot, and Mount Mills run north along the crest, all above 13,000 feet. Mount Morgan stands over the east side.
Why it won: The trailhead starts at 10,244 feet, which means you skip the part of a Sierra hike where you climb through trees looking at nothing. You get out of the car into the scenery. The valley is nearly flat, the lakes are continuous, and the 13,000-foot wall at the head of it is in view the entire time. Under our weighting — where reward per mile carries 20% — that combination beat Big Pine's raw drama.
The cost is company. This is a well-known trail and you'll share it. Go on a weekday, start at sunrise, or push past the Gem Lakes toward Morgan Pass where most people turn around.
The scores
| Rank | Trail | Scenery | Water | Reward/mile | Access | Solitude | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Little Lakes Valley | 9 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 3 | 8.85 |
| 2 | Big Pine Lakes | 10 | 10 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 8.30 |
| 3 | Kearsarge Pass | 9 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 5 | 7.85 |
| 4 | Bishop Pass | 8 | 8 | 8 | 9 | 5 | 7.80 |
| 5 | Piute Pass | 8 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 8 | 7.35 |
Weights: scenery 35%, water 25%, reward per mile 20%, access 10%, solitude 10%.
Change the weights and you change the order. If solitude were worth 35% instead of 10%, Piute Pass wins going away. That's the honest limitation of any list like this, and the reason we published the math instead of just the ranking.
Before you go
These are all high trails. Mosquito Flat starts above 10,000 feet and Kearsarge Pass tops out near 11,800. If you're driving up from sea level, sleep a night in Bishop or Mammoth first, drink more water than feels necessary, and turn around if a headache turns into nausea. Altitude doesn't care how fit you are.
Check conditions before you commit — passes hold snow into July, afternoon thunderstorms build fast in summer, and smoke can shut down a clear week in August. We keep every source we use on our conditions and closures page.
Storms, snow, and route conditions change what any of these hikes actually asks of you. Every trail here is one we've walked, and we don't publish a route we haven't.