We loved being in a new and different part of the Sierra. I struggled to place the scenery as Sierran, and finally decided that it reminded me a bit of the big Buckeye Valley, north of Bridgeport. Kennedy Creek also has active cattle ranching, though the cows were not on it yet. We did find ample signs of their passage:
We had great luck with wildlife around Kennedy Lake-- birds in particular. We saw brilliant yellow warblers of several species, and mallards and sandpipers, a snipe, and 20 Canada Geese were sounding off on the big lake. Best of all was the closeup view of a mature Bald Eagle, both perched and flying. We also saw Squirrels and Chipmunks, and 4 Deer, 3 of whom were romping around together, leaping and chasing! There is no quota for this area of the Emigrant Wilderness, and just like the good old days, we walked into the ranger station in Pinecrest and obtained our Wild. Permit. The trailhead is well marked on the road to Kennedy Meadows Resort, and a nice store there has everything you might want for your trip. There is also a cafe, and showers for backpackers who think they need them.
Okay, so our trip was pretty wide open. We had a couple of circle options to choose from, and many easy peaks to climb for view-bagging. Great fishing lakes abound in the North Fork of Cherry Creek where we were headed, but the solid snow covering confounded both my fishing hopes on the one hand, and our snowshoeing plans on the other. Two trips in a row now I have packed the snowshoes along for no good reason, other than character building. We took the conservative view that it is better to have them and not need them, than to need them and not have them. But lately all my cursing has come from the former. I suffered packing both pairs since they were my bright idea. Here below is most of our gear:
All of our days were set in brilliant weather, but for 3 of our 5 days we were back in wintery surface conditions. This is what we had hoped for, but we did really enjoy our first and last days, which looked and felt like early summer. Our actual route became the shortest of the two possible circles. We camped by Emigrant Meadow Lake (9,407') on our second night, and climbed up Grizzly Peak from there on Day 3. We then returned to the Stanislaus River and K.Meadows via Summit Creek after crossing the easy Brown Bear Pass. It was a 31 mile trip. We chose to cut out the interesting additions of Snow Lake to Bigelow and Black Bear Lakes, and the possibly difficult crossings of the East, and the North Forks of Cherry Creek. We omitted that circle mainly because we could see that there would be no fishing to be done even in the big Emigrant Lake, which still looked well frozen, though lower down, at 8827.' I assumed the higher Emigrant Lakes would be frozen, since they are from 9,250 to 9,700' lakes
I will show the rest of our trip in photos, and describe some of the details in captions.
