It’s hard to imagine today, but for the first several decades of its existence, Sequoia National Park had only two high peaks of any significance – Mt. Silliman and Alta Peak. All the rest of the alpine summits that are today within the park fell outside its boundaries until the 1926 expansion. Of the two summits that were within the park, the mountain we now call Alta Peak attracted much more attention.
From the beginnings of tourism, almost everyone who approached Sequoia did so via Three Rivers and the lowermost reaches of the Middle Fork Canyon of the Kaweah River. The alignment of this canyon, then as now, focused attention on a single mountain – modern Alta Peak. Those early travelers who climbed Moro Rock found that same mountain dominated their view. Because it was closer to Moro Rock than the peaks of the Great Western Divide, Alta seemed higher than any of the other peaks visible from that summit and more imposing.
Another factor that made the mountain important was that it was relatively easy to get to. The first Anglo-American residents of the Giant Forest region, the cattlemen of the Tharp and Mehrten families, early discovered that the biggest meadows in the region to the east of the Giant Forest were to be found on the southern slopes of modern Alta Peak. By the early 1870s, the two families were taking cattle to these meadows over a rough trail that ran east to Panther Gap and then on to the meadows.
When the mining boom swept over the Mineral King area in the middle 1870s, this trail across the southern slopes of the peak was extended to connect the two areas. In the summer of 1876, William B. Wallace passed this way with Tom and N. B. Witt, and since the big meadow on the peak’s southern slope represented the highest point along their route, they concluded to call the place Alta (“high”) Meadow. The name stuck.
In the summer of 1896, William R. Dudley of the Sierra Club visited the region, and in an article published in 1902 in the Sierra Club Bulletin, he noted that although the peak had not had a name six years earlier, it now was called Alta Peak by most residents of Three Rivers. He recommended the name be formally adopted.
The following year, when the U.S. Geological Survey mapped the region, the topographers adopted the Alta Peak name and placed it on the map just above a subordinate promontory they called Tharps Rock.
By this time, the relatively easy scramble up Alta Peak had become a must-do excursion for those traveling along the trail between the Giant Forest and Mineral King. Because the summit stood to the west of most of the other high peaks in the region, it had a particularly good view. From its summit, one could see east to Mt. Whitney and as far north as the Minarets, which were then a part of Yosemite National Park.
Work carried out by civilian rangers under military supervision in the summer of 1904 made the peak even more accessible by building a new and well-graded trail east from Panther Gap to Alta Meadow. This put the area within day range for tourists staying at Camp Sierra, who could now ride horseback to Alta Meadow, climb the peak on foot, and then ride home in time for a late and well-earned dinner beneath the Big Trees.
The trip to the summit eventually became so well-known that Ansel Hall’s 1921 Guide to Giant Forest confidently announced: “The view from Alta is conceded first place among those of the Park; indeed many mountaineers claim it to be one of the best of the whole Sierra.”
Cross-country hikers continued to scramble up the peak until the summer of 1927, when the NPS built a two-mile-long horse trail to the summit.
In the nine decades since the trail’s completion, Alta Peak has remained one of the premier hiking destinations within Sequoia National Park. Today, most hikers approach the peak from Wolverton, which cuts several miles off the old Alta Trail route from the Giant Forest. East of Panther Gap, they first follow the trail constructed in 1904, then turn onto the 1927 trail that leads steeply up through western white and foxtail pines to the summit. There, as Ansel Hall advertised more than ninety years ago, they still find a vista than can honestly be described as “one of the best of the whole Sierra.”
© Wm. Tweed