Dragon Peak To Gould Ridge Traverse With Bonus Kearsarge

Day 1: Cars to Camp and Kearsarge (5.25 miles, 3,400' gain)

The trailhead for Dragon is the heavily used Onion Valley lot.  This means a fairly easy drive even for us south Orange County types.  We even started comfortably late since it's a short hike to camp and even doing Kearsarge doesn't take long.


You start up the normal Kearsarge Pass trail and make a right at a very small sign which is sometimes hidden by brush.  It's before you even finish the initial climb out of the valley.  The trail then cuts off to the right and heads up a drainage north of Kearsarge.  You can also access Golden Trout Lake and the standard ascent of Gould up here.


It gets a little bouldery in a few places but nothing too difficult.


I'd forgotten that it was rather pretty up this canyon.  My main memory of the trip from 2010 is the fact we had smoke blowing over the crest at us the first night.


The lakes are also nicer than I remembered.  We stayed at the lower of the two since it's located right where you can cut back across from Golden Lakes canyon while descending from the end part of the Dragon to Gould loop.

It makes for a nice camp.  We stayed on the south side near a small outcropping into the lake.  No one else was camped there but we had a few parties come by dayhiking.

To climb Kearsarge you go up Lilly Pass and follow the ridge to the right a short distance to the summit.  It's an easy climb which is why we were doing in on the first day but it looks like it's going to be a painful sand slog.

Lilly Pass is in the center hidden behind the rock outcropping

Looking back down while climbing Lilly Pass

Looking up Lilly Pass

Looking back at University from the top of Lilly Pass

As promised it went surprisingly quickly.  Kearsarge is a quick stroll east from the pass.


The view from the top is nice but you're mostly looking down at Independance.  We did see some mountain sheep below us.

Mountain Sheep on the north side of Kearsarge

Returning to Lilly Pass via the north side of Kearsarge

Descending from the top of Lilly Pass

We were back in camp with plenty of daylight to swim and set about having a happy hour.  The lake is fairly shallow and so was a lot warmer than some of the others I'd been in recently.

We had an incredibly bright moon that night

Day 2: Dragon, Ridge Traverse to Gould, and Out (7 miles, 2500' gain, 12 hours)

Sunday was our long day and we were up and moving early.

Looking back down at the two lakes below Dragon

The first couple of hours are spent climbing up the drainage.  You reach the second lake and then set up the drainage south of Dragon aiming for the headwall.

Aim for the small shadow in the center

Right at the headwall you duck around a corner and find a way up the rocks.


I've done this part a few different ways.  It all comes down to what you feel is easiest vs what looks the most fun.


From the ridge it's a little less clear which way to go.

Jeff scouting ahead

Dragon on approach

This is the last part under the crack and where you end up staging people.  And then it's crack time...

Note that this is tilted a little but it shows what's below

In reality it's comfortable enough to do this

Or you can try and sell the drama a bit...

Already across looking back

As I mentioned before the feet are large, there are handholds, and the rock slopes inward.  Some folks were nervous until we got there but once they saw it had no problems.

Summit of Dragon

Looking down at Dragon Lake & Rae Lakes

Looking across towards Gould from Dragon

This was only the first part of the day. The traverse to Gould gives more 3rd class and some interesting route finding along the way.  At some points we had to get off the ridge due to it cliffing out.  Notice the small backtrack on the map.

Gould in the distance

It's solid fun climbing for the most part.



Gould itself is interesting.  It's easy 2nd class to the base of the summit, 3rd class from there, and 4th class for the last 4 feet or so.

Gould summit turning 3rd class

Gould the last few feet.  You go straight up

It's also rather cramped up there so I don't have many pictures that show it off well.  The view is awesome though.

Dragon from Gould

From Gould we dropped down the Golden Trout Lake drainage though we stayed high since we needed to traverse back to our camp.


In retrospect staying high was probably more trouble than it was worth.  Down by the lake it looked like a lot easier going and some of the slopes we were crossing were a bit close to the angle where things start moving.

At one point Jeff and I were behind trying to catch up with the group a loaded hillside started to slide on us.  So just imagine all those rocks in the picture above suddenly starting to move around you.  We managed to avoid injury but were both badly shaken.  One of my carbon fiber hiking poles had snapped while Jeff had a strap on his pack break.


Once you swing around to the north it's a lot easier going and we were able to drop right into camp.


From there it's just a stroll (-ish) down the trail.  Total time from leaving camp in the morning to getting to the cars at the end of the day was 12 hours but we weren't moving very fast.