September 1-5, 2016 -- For the Labor Day weekend, I joined two buddies on a four night backpacking trip - half on trail and half off trail. Our circuit, which included a 13,000 pass, a 12,500 foot pass, and a 12,000 foot pass, started and ended at the Rock Creek trailhead, on the east side of California's Sierra Nevada range. A month later, on a flight from Denver to San Jose, I was able to look down on our route from my airplane window... fantastic. I have interspersed these two sets of images to help tell the story of the hike.