Night Cap Peak is a 10,641-foot summit in California’s Sierra Nevada, on the edge of the Emigrant Wilderness in Stanislaus National Forest. In Tuolumne County, it rises steeply above Kennedy Meadow, with more than 4,400 feet of relief in three miles, and its slopes drain into Kennedy and Deadman creeks, tributaries of the Middle Fork Stanislaus River. The name seems to have originated in the 1890s when the USGS used “Night Cap,” likely because the summit resembled a nightcap, and the current official name was adopted in 1979. The peak lies in an alpine climate shaped by Pacific storms lifted over the Sierra crest.