TR: 7/27-8/1 sorta circle of solitude

[torpified]

ETA: Arghh---none of my pictures are worth anything like 1k words! I'm demoting them to links. The TR warns you that I can be farcically incompetent!

Background: The hope for this trip was to visit Colby Pass and the upper Kern Basin, by travelling an on-trail loop from Road’s End: out over Avalanche Pass, down to Scaffold Meadow, up Cloud Canyon and over Colby Pass, down (and down and down) to Sequoia’s Junction Meadow, then going the long way –via Lake South America-- to the JMT, follow that North over Forester Pass to the Bubbs Creek trail, and (because one good Junction Meadow deserves another) return via Kings Canyon’s Junction Meadow to Road’s End.

Day 1. Road’s End to Roaring River, ~15m/5000ft up/3000ft down (metrics, which often surprise me, are eyeballed from a caltopo profile).

The trail between RE and the Paradise Valley junction was flat and lush and surprisingly deserted, at least of humans. The first other hikers I saw had already turned left at the junction, presumably to start the Rae Lakes Loop. I turned right and, in the company of Bubbs Creek, started climbing away from South Fork Kings.

The environs were not deserted of gnats. Fortunately, they weren’t bitey, instead contenting themselves with entering my facial orifices uninvited. By lunch, I had inhaled two and gulped six more. I also met two solo hikers heading out. The one wearing a headnet cheerfully assured me that the switchbacks were almost over. The headnetless hiker asked irascibly how far it was to the parking lot. The other mammal encountered on this stretch was a non-acrophobic deer browsing between the switchbacking trail and the chasm containing Bubbs Creek. The sang froid he demonstrated in the face of exposure deserted him in the face of another menace. He’d evidently just grown his first set of antlers, and projected befuddled exasperation whenever they got entangled in overhanging branches.

After a little less than 4 miles, an extremely improbable trail lights out from Bubbs creek to wend its highly engineered way up a cliff next to Sphinx Creek, and then to Avalanche Pass beyond. The first mile or so of climb is steep and rocky and hilarious, dotted with ornamental juniper framing dramatic views up and down canyon.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NKGqN ... sp=sharing

While I wouldn’t call it easy going, it was supremely enjoyable. Then commenced a spell of forest walking, a spell that (with a few brief but memorable interruptions) would extend to Big Wet Meadow the next day. The trail was just as steep as before; the views much less dramatic. Probably the best scenery were intermittent flowery bits. Amid this best scenery, gnats, flies, and mosquitos also bloomed. One fly, less gentlemanly than the gnats, nailed me on the forearm. I’m mildly allergic and develop a persistent red welt. Every other fly I saw on my person for the remainder of the trip had alit near the scene of the crime, perhaps to inspect his handiwork.

Part of what I enjoy about backpacking is the heady mix of farcical incompetence and cheerful perseverance it brings out in me. I exhibited some of the former when I stopped at the main crossing of Sphinx Creek to collect water. I was using AquaMira drops on this trip, keeping them in the same pocket of my backpack as a backup Sawyer mini and other things (headlamp, toque, the notebook I scribble this in) I could fear or imagine wanting on trail.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18bJ3t ... sp=sharing

This stop to collect water presented me with two mysteries. First, why was the interior of that pocket so damp? Second, why didn’t I remember how strongly the AquaMira containers made their neighbors smell of bleach? Savvy readers will recognize that the two mysteries were one and the same: encouraged by the altitude difference between Ann Arbor and Sphinx Creek, Part A of my AquaMira treatment had suffered a hernia, and was bleeding its bleachy contents into its surroundings. I, on the other hand, with farcical incompetence, hypothesized that the liquid was water that had dripped out of my Sawyer, and that I’d simply repressed memories of bleach smells. It was almost 24 hours before I recognized the situation for what it was---not a disaster, because I had backup systems, but definitely an inconvenience. I’ll admit that it was some consolation that how strongly everything smelled of bleach for the rest of the trip enabled me to sustain the illusion that I was cleaner than I in fact was.

I saw three more people, all descending, en route to Avalanche Pass, which was distinctly less dramatic than its name suggests: a forested, unsigned saddle. The walk down the other side---at first alongside a slanting meadow fringed by burned forest, then through an unadorned burned forest --- offered teaser views of mountains in the distance. I meant to overnight at Moraine Meadows but overshot. This meant I got to enjoy bigger and better views during the final descent to the great confluence of trails near the Roaring River Ranger Station. I think the only other person in the area that night was a trail crew member trying to rendezvous with her trail crew---who hadn’t shown! Mule problems, she conjectured. She described their summer project: there’s a place in the upper reaches of the Elizabeth Pass Trail where the trail traverses slabs also traversed by seepage. The crew are building walls there to prevent unsuspecting hikers from losing their footing and shooting off over the headwall to increase the body count in Deadman Canyon!

Day 2: Roaring River to Colby Lake, ~10m, +3800ft, -700ft.
The trail set out alongside the Roaring River, travelling up Cloud Canyon, which parts before the Whaleback like the Red Sea before Moses. The first hour or so was forest walking, punctuated by downed trees---the most minor of which I could step over without breaking stride; the most major of which was an easy class 2, at worst---and streamlets. Mosquitos came out in droves at Brewer Creek. I failed to locate the Cement Table in Cement Table Meadow, and began to somewhat miffed about the stubborn persistence of forest walking. It seemed like, after walking uphill and swallowing gnats for a day and then some, I’d paid my dues and deserved to be sprung into the high country! Then I rounded a corner into Big Wet Meadow, where I managed to locate the Whaleback.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BUhwHb ... sp=sharing

The rest of the day was nonstop fun, enhanced by grace notes of terror and disorientation. I gawked the entire time I strolled along Big Wet Meadow. At the far end, I failed to locate Shorty’s Cabin. I climbed with the trail alongside the western flank of the Whaleback. Steep and rocky, the trail gets you up fast. I kept taking what I flattered myself was the iconic picture looking back at Big Wet Meadow, only to round a few more switchbacks to encounter a perspective more spectacular still.

After maybe 800 feet of stiff climbing, there’s an intermission where the trail shimmies through a little wet meadow, necessitating many teetery crossings of its adorable creeklet. A boulder growled at me, which surprised me because (a) I didn’t think I’d done anything that should offend a boulder, and (b) I didn’t know that boulders growled. Then another one growled. I eventually conjectured, with the emphasis on “conjecture” because I have no idea what I’m talking about, that, underneath the creeklet that flowed over the surface of the meadow, was a bigger subterranean water course delivering groan-inducing shudders to the meadow boulders.

After the meadow, another stiff climb toward Colby Lake. The trail got more difficult (for me) to follow in this section, but in an especially fun way. What it took (for me) to follow it was to pay careful attention to what it took to build it---the water bars and steps and curbs and walls and fill. There weren’t very many cairns (that I recognized as such---as this trip progressed so did my sensitivity to cairnage), but all these other features share with cairns the status of disruptions in the natural order—disruptions that told me not only that others were here before I was, but also that with incredible kindness they had fabricated a trail for me to follow to Colby Lake.

Which I did. Not long after I set up camp (including an improvised gravity filter employing my sawyer mini and my cookpot), it rained, then hailed. I hunkered in my tent and amused myself by writing this and rigging an interior clothesline. Then the clouds lifted and I staggered around trying to take pictures that did justice to the late afternoon light.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wrEZ_d ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13-KBEB ... sp=sharing

I took so many that I got one where there’s a fish jumping out of the lake! The skies stayed crystal clear all night. Unwittingly but luckily, the way I pitched my tent made it easy to monitor the stars when I wasn’t sleeping. There were plenty to monitor---I could see the Milky Way!



Day 3: Colby Lake almost to the Upper Kern Basin, ~16m, +4400ft, -4300ft.
The trail between Colby Lake and Colby Pass took the virtues of the trail between Big Wet Meadow and Colby Lake and turned them up to 11. There were two stiff climbs separated by an intermission. On the first stiff climb, I repeatedly photographed what I imagined was the iconic view looking back down on the lake, only to discover an even more transporting view a few switchbacks later. Especially where it climbed steeply, the trail was a marvel of engineering, and marvelling at its engineering helped me follow it. For the final climb to the pass, the trail builders had essentially taken an unfriendly talus field and reorganized it into a series of terraces conveying steep but amiable switchbacks upward.

Prints along the trail indicated that its previous users walked on cloven hoofs. They might have been more of SEKI’s nonacrophobic deer. I didn’t see much in the vicinity that would entice a deer, but maybe they were commuting from one grazing area to another. Still I wondered whether they could be Sierra Bighorns, wandering outside their official Zoological Area. I hate to be a snitch, but whoever they were, they were shortcutting the occasional switchback.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-ij7Eb ... sp=sharing

After enjoying Colby Pass for a bit, I started what proved to be a nearly interminable descent (in subjective units; in objective units it was about 8 miles and 3900 ft) to Sequoia’s Junction Meadow. The first thousand feet were dreamy: a sandy path through open country organized along increasingly familiar staircase + landing principles, where steep descents would relent to cross lovely plateaulets. But then the trail went back into the woods, plunging precipitously over unstable drifts of loose pine cones, until it joined the Kern Kaweah River. Accompanied by hordes of mosquitos, the trail then followed the Kern Kaweah to its confluence with the plain old Kern in Junction Meadow.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10PF6hU ... sp=sharing


I don’t enjoy long descents, especially if the footing is loose---and often the footing gets looser the more you descend, thanks to the tendency of the mountains you’re descending to shed rocks. That was definitely the plot of this trail, down which I was creeping, filling with despair. Mosquitos kept biting me while the kind of drizzle that mostly evaporates before reaching earth tried to fall. Then, a bit more than 3 hours into the ordeal, I looked down canyon and saw what struck me as an insuperable obstacle to forward riverside progress: a gumdrop-shaped monolith whose cliffs rose straight from the river. I took a picture because I couldn’t imagine what the trail, which had been occupying the space between the river and the canyon walls, would do given the imminent disappearance of that space.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FgK9XC ... sp=sharing

I hadn’t reckoned with the maniacs who’d built this trail. The answer was a crazy Hieronymus Bosch switchback staircase up the chute behind the gumdrop-shaped monolith blocking the way. Horizontally, the switchbacks were scaled for munchkins---about two steps long even for my stubby legs. Vertically, they were scaled for goliaths. At one, I had to flop onto my stomach and squiggle to make to the next tier. What made them even harder to ascend: I was laughing hysterically the whole time. But it wasn’t far to the top. When I got there I spent some time trying, and failing, to take a picture that did justice to the lunacy of the trail design.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s8iHF ... sp=sharing

At Junction Meadow, I encountered my first humans since the very small trail crew at Roaring River: a party of seven less one, who were wondering where their missing member was. Him I met on the hot mile-long slog up to the HST’s junction with the Kern Canyon Trail. He testified that I was the fourth person to alert him that his family was waiting for him down below. The Kern Canyon Trail marks an amazing, and amazingly welcome, transition from sere greyness to shady-ferny-piney greenness. Not far down it, a happy party was setting up camp near an old cabin and its effusion of snow plants.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ofXg32 ... sp=sharing

I’d originally hoped to make it to the Upper Kern Basin today, but that hope was predicated on the fantasy of a rapid and bouyant descent from Colby Pass. Figuring there was a lavish campsite where the trail crossed the Kern River, I aimed for that.

I missed it. The Kern crossing or crossings completely flummoxed me. As best as I can reconstruct, guppied by some stout trees that had fallen across the river, I crossed prematurely. Finding nothing remotely like a trail on the other side, I floundered morosely through the underbrush, crossing and recrossing braids of the Kern, and also, I think, of Milestone Creek. I finally relocated the trail by finding the “no fires above this elevation” sign. The trail was right beside it. I hopped back on. Refreshed by extensive fording and impelled by an “I once was lost but now am found” adrenaline boost, I carried on, and on, and on. I wound up setting up on a slightly slanty slab alongside the lake at the junction of the Kern Canyon Trail and the JMT cutoff. Although thunder rumbled during dinner and chores, it was another good night for tent-bound stargazing. The Milky Way was back, but got upstaged by a meteor!



Day 4: almost UKB to Vidette Meadow, ~18m *including a daring cross country shortcut*, +4200ft, -5200ft.
My InReach and the NWS text eachother; this morning’s NWS text was short of vowels but long on foreboding: ``TstmLkl 81%”. I climbed the last few hundred feet to the Upper Kern Basin proper, which evidently had not been texting the NWS. Ringed by mountains in every direction but the narrow slot through which the Kern exits, it sparkled with mirror-calm tarns reflecting jagged granite silhouettes framed against a crystal blue sky.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u890M ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xlt5Eq ... sp=sharing

A lot of the way to the Lake South America junction, the trail wasn’t so much a trail as a series of hints about a cross-country route, hints offered by a consortium of cairns that varied wildly in how frequently and how clearly they communicated. I started to enjoy this, and was actually sort of disappointed when the trail presented trailwise again, after the junction to Lake South America. Motivated by the TstmLkl 81% to get over Forester Pass sooner rather than later, I decided with regret to skip the spur to LSA, and headed south to rejoin the JMT. I met some intrepid hikers --- the first moving along the non-HST part of my route I’d seen since before Avalanche Pass --- at the saddle just south of the LSA junction. They were on day 13 of a 14 day jaunt, hoping to access Lake Reflection by the off-trail pass they’d heard was the easiest. We gawked north and west into their proximate future and my recent pass, then I carried on southward. After a few steps I was moved to shout – it was pretty windy – at them “it’s nice in this direction too!”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BetWX ... sp=sharing

A bout of barely controlled sand skiing delivered me to a flat walk beside a long lakelet. At its south end, I began a daring cross-country exploit, my first ever as part of a route (as opposed to a detour to explore and/or look for places to camp). The Lake South America trail and the JMT both run roughly north/south, a mile or so apart, separated in their northern reaches by a rocky ridge considerably higher than they are, and in their southern reaches---well, by nothing significant, as far as I could tell from the map. Indeed, the 11750 ft contour line leaves the LSA trail at the south end of the long lakelet and curves through what looks to be a mildly tilted plane until it intersects the JMT. Following the contour line, supposing that upon closer inspection the terrain didn’t turn out to be riven by shallow chasms of molten lava, promised to shorten my day several miles and a few hundred feet of ascent and descent. And, strange to say, that’s exactly how it worked out---15 minutes of easy walking across open country featuring the trip’s first marmot, and the shortcut was accomplished! (Concerning the marmots---is it a coincidence that they seemed to be concentrated along the JMT corridor?)

In my wildest dreams, rather than speeding back to Road’s End on the JMT, I was going to meander: try to get into Center Basin for Night 4, and up to Lake Reflection for Night 5. But between the TstmLkl 81%, and a satellite message from my husband that began, “presumably you know about the flash flood warning for your area,” speeding back to Road’s End on the JMT seemed like the thing to do. Walking up toward Forester, I suffered my customary anxiety that the ridge was concealing a thunderhead shaped exactly like the ridge. It wasn’t. Still I had TstmLkl 81% to outrace, plus it can be a scary scrum atop Forester Pass. So I wasn’t planning to linger there. But I ran into Topix member michaelzim there and paused for an enjoyable and highly asymmetric (most of it came from him!) exchange of trail intelligence. I kept my pack on, though---he’d set down his, which was also a Mariposa, and I feared that if I’d followed suit, my next manifestation of farcical incompetence would to race off down the north side of the pass toting the wrong backpack!

Carrying the right backpack toward Bubbs Creek, I came to appreciate that this season’s JMT costume is a sun hoody fully deployed, a painted trucker’s hat, and (to underscore that other elements aren’t really about sun protection) yoga short shorts. I also passed a clump of people who’d established camp by 2 pm and were showing one another their Camino Santiago tattoos.

The rain didn’t start until after I’d set up about 100 meters off trail in Vidette meadow, in a huge established camp, now deserted. Its denizens had left me a coil of wire. With my unfailing sense of place, I situated the tent in what, the distribution of desiccated equine droppings suggested, must have been the mule bivy, and passed a quiet, drizzly, star-free night.

Day 5: OUT! ~14m, +200ft, -4700ft.
Pursued by imagined flash floods, I hustled out, into a park booming with people totally unconcerned with the coming apocalypse. A few glitches: I kept overtaking parties of two just as one of them pulled off the trail to pee. And, about 5 miles out of Road’s End, I had my inaugural Sierra rattlesnake encounter. It slithered across the trail ahead of me, slowly enough to make sure I saw its rattle. Then it began to slither down the side of the trail toward me, periodically raising its sinister pointy head to assess, as if trying to determine whether I was worth murdering. I kept backing up, toward the oncoming flash flood. It kept slithering. I eventually concocted the folk belief that, if a snake were fully extended in the service of slithering, it couldn’t mount any long-distance strikes. Buttressed by this recently-invented belief, I resolved to sprint by the snake on the far side of the path. Although it wasn’t part of my resolution to emit an involuntary shriek as I passed, that is exactly what I did. Taking offense, the snake coiled up and rattled. I set an elderly lady land speed record exiting the wilderness.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tpZqAO ... sp=sharing

[Love the Sierra]

Thanks for the TR!

[Lumbergh21]

Always enjoy your trip reports. I too crossed Avalanche pass from Bubbs Creek to Roaring River as part of a loop back in 2016. With a name like Avalanche Pass, it had to be awesome. That name is a whole lot of false advertising. Then again "boring middle of a forest pass" might have already been taken.

[thegib]

Impressive daily numbers! Next time you do this route consider Milestone pass, it's fabulously scenic and skips that long descent to Junction Mdw (south). And the route finding could hardly be easier. Thanks for the write up!

[moonburn]

Most thoroughly entertaining, thank you. "The heady mix of farcical incompetence and cheerful perseverance" rings true to my experience and appreciation of backpacking

[michaelzim]

Torpified - What a hoot!...I guess I sensed your hilarious side at the top of Forester, but knew not yet of your admirable dexterity with words and wit. Great trip report and you have no more excuses to be a supposed 'lurker'. The photos were fine as links in a new tab.

I'm super impressed with how much ground you covered and altitude gain/loss. I also appreciate your candid and vivid descriptions of sections I might have done if I had made it over Midway Pass to Colby, then north to Avalanche and Bubbs. Mmmmmmm...I like the high, open, big stuff like you, so all that forest trail mileage you describe I do not regret missing. My woods zones self entertainment show is not quite as satisfactory as yours.

Thanks for posting, and look forward to more in future. (Mmmmm...a username posts search may turn up more of your chuckle gems!)

Best ~ Michaelzim

[shawnterustic]

well, THAT WAS A DELIGHT! Thank you so much for providing me with inspiring lunchtime fodder

[cgundersen]

torpified,
I'll add to the kudos for your knack for stringing together vivid descriptions and self-deprecating commentary. We should all be so skilled? Still my impression is that you found solitude where you'd expect to find it (namely, when you were not on the highways), beauty throughout, and some classic interactions with humans and reptiles. The one thing I'm curious about (well, make it two: the last time I went over Colby pass, the north side was pretty much a mess, but you seemed to take it in stride, so maybe not so bad?) is your shortcut: when I've gone through there, ancient logs and snags decorate that area implying that in some long-ago, pre-warming epoch, it was forested, or at least punctuated with trees. Is that evidence no longer apparent, or did you simply manage a route that missed the remnants I'm referring to? Cameron

[sekihiker]

Thanks for the highly entertaining report. I, too, have missed Shorty's Cabin the several times I have passed it.

I loved your description for photo "apuzzle.jpeg" and the accompanying photo "asolution.jpeg". I was happy to see the switchbacks in "asolution". It seems to me the times I have been through that gap it was just steep, loose sand and talus.

BTW, I thought it was normal, almost required, to shriek when you are that close to a rattlesnake.
As far as your self-characterization as "farcically incompetent", the trip sounded a lot like most of my normal trips.
This is one of the best trip reports I have read. The photos were awesome, too.

[torpified]

Thanks, all, for the kind words, sensible suggestions, and solidarity with respect to haplessness and reptile-induced lapses of dignity!

The one thing I'm curious about (well, make it two: the last time I went over Colby pass, the north side was pretty much a mess, but you seemed to take it in stride, so maybe not so bad?) is your shortcut: when I've gone through there, ancient logs and snags decorate that area implying that in some long-ago, pre-warming epoch, it was forested, or at least punctuated with trees. Is that evidence no longer apparent, or did you simply manage a route that missed the remnants I'm referring to? Cameron

North side of Colby Pass: that the likes of me made it through is proof positive that it's not so bad! I really liked it. If I'd been descending, or ascending later in the day or in the trip, I might have felt different. But its main offense, steepness, was amply offset by the determined trail engineering, the prints testifying to the escapades of Sierra bighorn (or nonacrophobic deer)---and the fact, not unrelated to the steepness, that it just kept getting me higher and higher!

ancient logs and snags: did I walk through a petrified forest without even noticing it?? I crossed at about 11,700 ft. I recall sandy barrens with some rock ornamentation. Maybe there were branches, too, but certainly not so much former forest that I needed to pay attention to avoid tripping over it. Maybe you got lucky?