With the daylight winding down, and the temperatures starting to drop, I figured I should get out and do one last big run before the season really comes to a close. Gotta take advantage of the shape I'm currently in and explore! Well, in this case, it was more complete a loop I tried unsuccessfully to do with my sister almost exactly 3 years prior (with a day two bonus!).
The weekend routes:
Day 1:
The big day one loop is a 46km loop with around 3000m of climbing over 3 passes. The three passes in the clockwise direction I did the run are: Timber Gap, Black Rock Pass, and Sawtooth Pass. I ran this loop clockwise because I thought it would be significantly easier to come down the steep, un-maintained trail from Sawtooth Pass than to go up it (hint: it was). I started the day around 730am, a little after sunrise.
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| Looking down into Mineral King Valley and the peaks to the south. |
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| Timber Gap |
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| Some pointy rocks near where Timber Gap Trail and Black Rock Pass Trail intersect |
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| Cliff Creek Valley (Black Rock Pass Trail) |
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| Fall colours while approaching Pinto Lake |
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| Looking back and up the Valley at the granite I'll be on top of later in the day... |
It took me a little over 3 hours to reach the top of Black Rock Pass, which was ~18k in, with ~2/3rds of the climbing over with! This was my first stop for food, and to relax and enjoy the views.
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| From Black Rock Pass looking east. Little Five Lakes are to the left of the centre ridge, and one of the Big Five Lakes is visible on the right. |
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| The trail around Little Five Lakes with the Kaweah's to the right |
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| (lower) Big Five Lakes |
I stopped at Big Five Lakes to eat lunch. At this point it was pretty much dead on noon, with 4:30 elapsed. I enjoyed the pizza I made on Thursday night, filled both my bottles and saw the only group between Timber Gap trail and Sawtooth Pass!
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| Small swampy lake |
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| Breaking out into the sub-alpine in Lost Canyon |
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| Meadows in upper Lost Canyon with Sawtooth in the background. |
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| Lake Columbine and Sawtooth |
The trail from Lake Columbine to Monarch Lakes is un-maintained. It wasn't hard to follow to Sawtooth Pass, but was no longer the super pleasant easy NPS trail.
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| Looking back from Sawtooth Pass |
The un-maintained trail from Sawtooth Pass, As I mentioned earlier, was a steep sandy scree field. It was quite easy and fast to get down, but I ended the descent with shoes filled with sand. I would absolutely hate to climb this bit.
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| Empire Mountain from Sawtooth Pass |
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| Scraggly trees past Monarch Lake... Back on NPS maintained trail |
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| Looking towards Timber Gap |
I finished the day in around 8:30 elapsed. I walked the last 3km of the descent down to Mineral King as I had ample daylight, and I did not feel like completely destroying my knees trying to run it. It was probably a good choice, and might have been why I could walk the next day??
Day 2:
I woke up with legs so I decided to do one of the hikes I hadn't previously done in Mineral King. With my sister 3 years ago we went to Franklin Pass (which is spectacular), and the previous day I'd done both Sawtooth and Timber... so it was off into the network of trails to the southwest of Mineral King. I more or less decided to follow whatever looked like the most used route since I hadn't looked into these before coming.
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| A gentle climb out of Mineral King |
Following the most used trail, I ended up doing Eagle Lake...
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| A bench on the way up to Eagle lake |
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| Looking back when almost at the lake |
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| Eagle Lake |
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| There was a boulder field on the trail, and this very neat rock was in the trail |
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| Looking north-east at the peaks of Mineral King (from the boulder field) |
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| Eagle sinkhole |
There was a cool feature on this trail which I didn't notice on the way up... eagle creek disappears into a sinkhole on the bench. It then re-appears almost half a kilometre later!
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| Looking at Empire Mountain |
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| Mineral King |
Eagle Lake was a good little hike. It was about 11.5km with 650m of climbing. Probably one of the better short options out of Mineral King.
A great weekend in the sierra. Mineral King is a wonderful place!
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