Gaylor Lakes Trail Map

Distance:  3 miles (4.8 km) round trip to the upper lake
Trailhead Elevation:  9,950 feet (3,000 meters)
Elevation Gain:  600 feet (180 meters)

The red line marks the route from the trailhead up over the pass into the Gaylor Lakes basin. The trail will get you to the two uppermost Gaylor Lakes, but you'll have to freelance to the others. It's an open, largely treeless valley, so getting lost shouldn't be a problem. Just memorize where the Middle Gaylor Lake was, and perhaps the appearance of the mountain behind it, since that's where you'll have to return to when you want to find the trail home again.

So what are those other lakes? Directly north of the Middle Gaylor Lake is Upper Gaylor Lake. Off to the northwest are Upper and Lower Granite Lakes. Just offscreen to the southwest is Lower Gaylor Lake. The lake attempting to insinuate its way into the upper-right corner of the map is Tioga Lake, a reservoir just outside Yosemite. It's not part of this hike, but you can drive to it easily - it's just off the Tioga Road.

Once the trail departs the Middle Gaylor Lake, it proceeds north beside the upper lake's outlet (or if you'd rather, the middle lake's inlet) to the upper lake, and from there to the Great Sierra Mine, a source of silver during a brief stretch of the 1880's. The entire trail is 1.8 miles (2.9 km) one way.