We finally set off from Mineral King around 12pm in a beautiful green valley (though the flowers weren't all that impressive) and made good time to the first junction, where we stopped for lunch. The climb got much steeper after that and after the next junction (to Mosquito Lakes) it seemed to go on forever (at least from the perspective of my younger son). However, the views were pretty stunning across the canyon. Finally, after crossing a scree slope, the grade started to ease, but it was still quite a way up to the lake and in the end we had climbed over 2000ft by the time we got there at 4pm. The lake was very nice, and pleasant to swim in, though the campsites weren't that great - in the trees and not much flat space around. Sunset was very pretty and there weren't too many mosquitoes. It was quite busy on a Saturday night - plenty of other people had clearly picked this out to take their kids to on a first backpacking trip. However, I guess it would be much quieter in the week since most people seem to do this as an out and back, since there is no easy way go any further from the lake.
The night wasn't as cold as we expected for 10,000ft, mid to high 30s, and in the morning we packed up quickly to head down and then drove down to Visalia for lunch and the long drive back to the Bay Area. Overall, nice to get out and good to see why people like Mineral King so much, but if we'd had a 2 night trip I think it would have been hard to do much on the layover day, so I wouldn't particularly recommend this compared to other destinations (even in the Mineral King area) which are much more suited to day hiking from camp.
- Mineral King
- Climbing to Eagle Lake
- Meadow before the final climb
- View across the canyon - Sawtooth to Franklin
- Eagle Lake sunset
- Morning at Eagle Lake dam
