High Sierra Trail

Weather is clean and stable for all three days. Overnights will be cold — 21°F Tuesday night, 26°F Wednesday night — so expect hard-frozen ground and icy surfaces on shaded trail sections each morning, especially on the granite slabs and any north-facing traverses above 8,000 ft. Daytime highs only reach 41-42°F with light winds, so you won't get much solar warming to melt ice off the trail until mid-morning. Start moving by 7 AM to maximize your usable daylight before the 4:57 PM sunset cuts your window short.

Daylight is the real operational constraint here. You have roughly 10.5 hours from sunrise to sunset, but golden hour starts at 4:20 PM and the light drops fast in the canyon terrain. That means your effective hiking window is closer to 9 hours once you account for morning camp breakdown. Plan campsites that you can reach by 4 PM and keep your daily mileage targets honest — this is late-season Sierra, not a July trip.

The stream crossing data flagged in this briefing — Llagas Creek near Gilroy at 146% of median, Salinas River near Bradley at 78% — comes from Central Coast and Bay Area watersheds with no relationship to the High Sierra Trail. Discard it for route planning purposes. With zero snowpack at all available SNOTEL stations and overnight temps well below freezing, Sierra drainages are running at low late-fall baseflow. Expect crossings along the HST (Kern River, Hamilton Creek, Nine Mile Creek) to be low and manageable, but carry trekking poles and scout each crossing anyway — even low flows are cold and slick on polished granite in November.

No active fires within 50 miles, no avalanche terrain on the HST, and no precipitation in the forecast. This is a genuinely good late-season window. Layer up for the cold nights, get moving early each morning to shake off the ice, and build your daily itinerary around that 4:57 PM hard stop.