Pyramid Peak revisited

Pyramid Peak was the first peak I visited after moving to California, almost 3 years ago. Looking for some more workout with quite some altitude gain, I decided to go back and pay it another visit. This time I decided to walk up via Rocky Canyon (my way down the last time) and check out the north ridge for my way down and later hike back to Highway 50 via the Horsetail Falls.

I park the car about 0.9 miles west of the Horsetail Falls / Pyramid Creek Trailhead. There is a little turnout there. The actual trail head is not very obvious, but is right there where the sign "KEEP RIGHT EXCEPT TO PASS" is, about 400 ft east of the turnout. Once you find the trail it's easy to follow, because it's obviously used by a lot of hikers and there are also lots of cairns which lead the way. After a little more than 2 hours I reach the southern end of the south base of the "pyramid" and from there follow the rocky ridge all the way to the top (Class 2, T3).

I enjoy the great scenery up here, in particular the view down to the many lakes of the Desolation Wilderness. For my way down I follow the steep north ridge to the saddle between Pyramid Peak and P. 9686 and from there down east towards Pyramid Lake. At an altitude of about 8200 ft I head southeast, scramble down to Toem Lake (Class III, T4+), follow its east shore to Ropi Lake, along the west shore to it's end and to the top of the Horsetail Falls. Right before the fall "gets serious", the usetrail turns away (west) from the creek a little uphill. From there it's pretty much straight down (some easy class III, T4) and I find the trail which leads me to the Pyramid Creek / Horsetail Falls trailhead. The walk back along the highway is not the most pleasant thing, but on the south side there's actually some sort of a trail, so at least I don't have to walk on the concrete street.