Our favorite subject-- backpacking with kids has come up again at HST, so I was inspired to create Trip Reports from a couple of our of our favorite friends and family trips. The 2 trips we made took up the first half of September; the Kings Canyon one here was the second trip, from 9/10 to 9/17. The winter of 2010-11 was a very snowy year, as you'll note from the extensive snowfields.
All of the kids seem to have inherited the backpacking genes, so we were able to pull off some nice off-trail, high route trips. This trip was from Road's End, up Bubb's Creek to meet East Creek at Junction Meadow. We only made it to the Sphinx Creek junction the first day, as we got a late start, and also spent a lot of time trying to find the rattlesnakes we kept hearing. We lucked into this one dining on a Western Fence Lizard:
We were homeschooling our boys, and the rest of the group were all keen naturalists, so we moved slowly, checking out all the wild things. Our boys were 10 and 7 that summer, and our friends' girls were 16 and 14.
Coming onto events like this make for the very best science lessons, in this case a literal view of the "food chain."
East Lake is beautiful itself, and a gateway to backcountry routes in every direction.
East Lake on Day 2 was a great place for the water-loving kids, who saw these logs, and just had to make a raft out of them. Traveling with kids for us means catering to their whimsical ways. We had plenty of time for their fun antics.
Carleton is an ornithologist, not a boat builder, so the envisioned raft turned into a crude canoe.
Adele and Nathan on the
canoe.
Our loose plan was to make a circle trip by crossing the Great Western Divide at either Longley Pass, or Brewer Col, and then off-trail to the famed Sphinx Lakes. We went down Sphinx Creek to the trail back to Bubb's Creek. The Longley Pass cornice was big that year; it looked like a breaking wave, and so we headed back to East Lake to try Ouzel Creek and Brewer Col. I had been up Mt Brewer a couple times, once in April snow, so I knew the col was not too bad. We gave it a try, and it worked out fine. It was pretty deep snow at the top, but solid going. Before that, we spent a couple days at Lake Reflection, and made day hikes from there.
The usual crew, with the kids along on all our trips back then. Our Vermont friends come to the Sierra every other summer, and they look forward to it for the mountain paradise that it is. Carleton is another of the frame pack faithful.
East Lake.
We moved camp to Lake Reflection, and made a day hike, and a climb from there.
Soon we were all high above East Creek, looking back down on East Lake.
Our peak is the dark one in the foreground, with Mt. Jordan behind it.
Properly trained, a man can be dog’s best friend.
