I had planned on continuing my exploration of the Kern Plateau by starting from Black Rock trail head (about 15 miles west of Kennedy Meadows) and hiking around Templeton and other meadows. Things got off to a bad start when I learned the road to Black Rock TH is closed. The ranger suggested I try the Jackass Creek trail instead, and no name could have been more apt.
Turns out the roads weren't the only place with downed trees. Here's a sample trail:
And then there were the trails of snow:
And then there's the trail system, which reminds me of the freeway system in Los Angeles. Typically, the numbers did not correlate with what the Tom Harrison map said:
On the positive side, I ended up hiking on jeep roads around Monache Meadows, which is quite lovely before the trio of plagues arrive (jeeps, dirt bikes and cattle). Some views of Olancha:
It starting snowing Saturday night, flurried (or hailed) most of Sunday, and was insanely cold Sunday night (I'm guessing under 20).
My hike on Sunday began with a muddy creek fording and continued on a trail to oblivion. It's nice that there's a trail marker here, but what it's marking wasn't clear:
So I turned around. I tried a different route on the way back, even though it wasn't on my map (the Harrison Southern Sierra map is uncharacteristically awful). Talk about a creek ford. This one looks slow and lazy at least, but it had a fast deep channel in the center:
One hundred yards later, the trail crossed back to the original side of the creek! I eventually found a good log that worked. Then the trail crossed back to the other side
. I guess this kind of perversity passed as humor to the trail builders. It turned out the trail crossed from one side to another every several hundred years. I managed to stay on one side the rest of the time, although it required some unpleasant traversing along steep slopes. On the positive side, I figured I had a better chance of getting out than this guy:
I knew if I followed Fish Creek the whole way, it would lead back to my car, even if the last few miles were off-map. Things were going swimmingly until I hit this, which was downright barbaric:
Property is theft! This turned out to be a huge in-holding, with barbed wire for miles, cutting me off from continuing east. This damn thing was like the Border Fence -- amazingly sturdy and well-maintained. It was already 6 p.m. and I was beginning to despair ever getting back to my car. After 30 minutes of walking along the barbed wire, I spotted a road, only there was no way to get to it. However, despair is the mother of invention and, somehow, the barbed wire got breached at this point (honestly, officer, I had nothing to do with it...). This got me back to the Sherman Pass Road, and about 4 miles of pavement-packing. Heck, at least the trail was easy to follow. I got back to my car around twilight.
Well, the worst day of backpacking is still better than the best day at work.
