Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board mt.dana trailhead ?

i am trying to find info on the mt dana trailhead in yosemite can anybody tell me about the hike. i am using it for a warm up next month.

If you do a search on the internet you should find some trail information and pictures. The trailhead is located on 120 at the Yosemite Tioga Pass Entrance Station. The trail is approximately 6 miles roundtrip and tops out at about 13,000 feet. Great views of the mono lake basin

We hiked Mt. Dana on August 1 this year. The trailhead is at elevation 9,945 feet and the summit is at 13,053 feet, meaning you gain 3,100 feet in about 3.25 miles (6.5 mile round trip). As you can tell from that basic information, the trail is very steep throughout most of its length. We climbed it two days after Mt. Whitney, and I can assure you that it will make good training for Whitney. In fact, while the Mt. Whitney Trail is much longer and the total elevation gain is more than twice as much as it is on the Dana trial, there is almost nothing on the Whitney trail that seemed as steep to us as the Mount Dana trail seemed along most of its length. Parking for the trail is available immediately south of the Tioga Pass entrance station to Yosemite National Park. The trail begins on the other side of the street, just east of the entrance station. The trail is not "official," meaning you won't find it on most maps, but once you find the beginning of it east of the entrance station, it is easy to follow. After a short, fairly level section, you will reach the "garden" area, which is filled with beautiful wildflowers, but will be the beginning of the steep section. After two miles, you will reach a plateau witha huge cairn. The trail becomes very difficult to follow at that point, but since you are above treeline, the top of the peak is easily visible, and it's mostly talus and boulders on the way up, you can pretty much pick your own route withour any fear of getting lost. We suggest using trekking poles. We got rained on, and the poles were very helpful on the way down when the trails were slick, since they are so darn steep! Good luck!

I too recommend Mt Dana as a training hike for Mt Whitney, or just as a destination on its own. Especially for people coming from the SF Bay area since you'll be driving right past it anyway.

We climbed it Jun 29 and I think maybe it was tougher than summitting Mt Whitney from Trail Camp (ignoring the issue of getting to and from Trail Camp, though). The trail is definitely better on Mt Whitney; finding one's way through all those rocks on Mt Dana is like picking through all the candidates on the CA recall ballot.

We started up Dana via the Glacier Canyon Tr since we were camped at Tioga Lk. That required a bit of cross country scrambling over the ridge to the main route. I found good info on this at <a href="http://www.summitpost.com/show/route_link.pl/route_id/183/object_id/108">
summitpost.com.
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We came down the standard route. The only advantage was that the route was obvious the whole way. The trail comes out almost exactly at the Tioga Pass entrance station, just a few yards outside the park, as I recall.

Bill Law

Click on this picture to see more pictures from our Mt Dana hike.

<a href="http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/williamlaw@sbcglobal.net/lst?.dir=/MtDana2003&.view=t">
<img src="http://members.aol.com/powergui/pics/DanaSummit.jpg"/>
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If you are entering from the 395 side of Yosemite you can save the 20 bucks entrance fee by just parking on the shoulder of 120 before the entrance station or at the little picnic area of upper Tioga lake.

I also reccomend veering left towards the ridge when you reach the giant cairn simply because it's fun to peer over the edge at lake Dana on the way up. This is a great hike and provides good training for marmot defense also. Don't leave food unattended at the summit. Look for the sky pilot blue flowers that bllom profusely on the trail and if you leave early you get to see the awesome pyramid like shadow Dana casts towards Toulumne meadows. Enjoy!

There is also some awesome day hiking on the opposite side of 120 all over 10k to several nice lakes. I think Granite is one of them and there is a lot of mining debri's up there from the abanded silver city. If you are getting acclimated for a couple days I'd suggest hiking there on day 1 and doing Dana on day 2.

Even though the top is inside the park, the rangers will tell you that the trail is not maintained by the park. It is right on the park boundary. That is one reason why there is less info published on the trail, but as noted in earlier, posts it is a great warmup for Whitney.

..thanks alot to everyone for the great info. Heading that way in 30 days..
coming from Florida, and looking forward to the Sierra Nevadas.

Thanks for the pictures, Powergui. Even though we hiked the mountain on August 1, the top was completely cloud-covered by the time we got near the top, so we never got rewarded with the full view. The pictures you posted solved that little problem nicely! BY the way, philcarmon, I lost a contact lens on the way down the trail (true story). If you should happen to find it . . . .