What Do People Think About a Luxury Lodge in the Wilderness?

[rockinrocker]

Sounds like a place I would want to visit actually...

[TwoFortyJeff]

I was living nearby during the 2006 season when it was being finished up. From what I saw, they absolutley destroyed a small little patch of some of the only private land left in the monument. You won't see it walking up through the trail they take you in through, but if you drive in to the Marvin Pass trailhead and walk up their private drive you will see all the damage from their construction. it looked like a mud pit. Hopefully they cleaned it up.

It is in a beautiful area. I don't think anyone can contest that. Even the lowly Mitchell Peak offers a nearly unrivaled view into Kings Canyon, the monument, the Kaweahs, the Great Western Divide, and (I believe) the Palisades.

I guess I am biased because I generally hate high Sierra camps for no good reason, which probably makes me an elitist. I do like meeting people and I do like the fact that is helps people get outdoors. I'm sure most of the visitors to the camps wouldn't be out there otherwise. Most of the people I met that were staying there had nothing but good things to say about the place. I know the food is the one thing people rave about. I have never tasted it, but I have dined with other locals to the area and I enjoyed what I would consider the best meals of my life.

In the end, the people staying there can go back to LA and remember their wilderness experience. I went back to Tennessee with only the best memories of being surrounded by the wilderness there for a season. Different people doing different things in the same land and taking away the same good feelings I guess. I just hope they don't make too many more of them.

I do laugh when they call it a wilderness experience though. Probably just as someone from northern Canada would laugh at what I consider wilderness.