I got up very early and hiked down the Blue Canyon trail. The trail in Blue Canyon is pretty much non-existent. It was discouraging. I had hoped it would be a good trail. It is all overgrown and on rocky terrain and is impossible to follow. Down near the middle falls the trail completely disappears in a wall of brush. There are cairns leading into the brush and then the trail just ends abruptly. Not even a semblance of one. I had wanted to explore further down the canyon but I did not want to bushwhack all the way down the canyon (and I did not have time for that either). I think it would have been just a short bushwhack but I did not know that. I crossed the creek above the middle falls and found a viewpoint of the waterfall.
Middle Blue Canyon Falls is a marvelous 67 ft. horsetail waterfall. There is a great viewpoint along the cliff edge from this side of the creek (after crossing). You would not be able to see it from the other side (trail side). It was also interesting there was a big wall of snow down here beside the creek (still from last winter) at about 9000 ft. elevation. It is October you realize.
I returned to camp and made my breakfast. This was going to be a killer tough day. I took a different route back up to the top of Mantle Pass thinking that it would be easier. It was not easier. It was actually much more difficult. I should have just gone back up the same way, but no that is not what the Madman does. The new route was still very rocky, but also much steeper. Dumb, Madman.
About 100 ft. below the pass is a little tarn. It is a very steep rocky section from the pass down to the tarn. Along the tarn is a wall of snow (still from last winter). It is very steep. Too steep to traverse for a human. I went below it. However, there were tracks along it. Bear tracks! I thought it was so strange that a bear had come up here and even traversed along this difficult snow patch. Did the bear go up over Mantle Pass? It seems too crazy.
It was 2:30pm when I finally made it back to the trail at Portal Lake. My goal was to hike as far back down the trail as possible. At 5:30pm I found a good spot along the river and called it quits for the day. I made a fire to keep the mosquitoes at bay while I ate my dinner. I do not usually make fires unless it is critically needed. It was critically needed.
My plan was to get up at 4am and hike in the dark to reach three more waterfalls first thing in the morning. I was about 4 miles from the first one.
I woke up to severe pain. I was pretty sure my pinky toe was broken. How did this happen? I am not sure. I think tightness in my boot caused it to start hurting on day one. Then the very difficult rock scrambling on the previous day and maybe I banged it extra hard against a rock or something. I was not sure and maybe it was not broken but it sure was painful. I could barely put my boot on. It was a sincere struggle to get it on. I started hiking back on the trail. I had a total of 16 miles to hike back to the car. (not even including the other 3 waterfalls). The first 3.5 miles took 3 hours. I was limping. Going very slowly. At this rate I would not be back to the car before dark. I decided I would skip the 3 waterfalls. They were all off-trail and there is no way in kingdom come that I could do anything off-trail. Not to mention that at this rate I would not even get to them before the sun was on them.
I ate my breakfast by the river. Loosened my boot. Took ibuprofen. This helped (probably both things but especially the drugs). I was now able to hike at a decent pace. Still slower than I usually hike but at least now I would get back to the car before dark. I had to go slowly on the rocky sections but thankfully the trail is good and smooth for the most part. I finished the hike at 3pm. (two hours later than I had planned – if my foot had been good). By the time I got to Pizza Factory my foot was killing me again. I limped into the restaurant. Took more ibuprofen. This helped again and I was able to drive all the way home without any pain. Drugs are good. It was a crazy 4 days in John Muir Wilderness and Kings Canyon National Park.
2 out of 6 waterfalls. Epic fail. Due to circumstances beyond my control I could only see two of the six waterfalls I had planned to see. I was probably lucky to even see two. I will get to all the things that went wrong in this post and some in the next post.
This was supposed to be my big fall October trip that I do every year where I see many waterfalls. Initially I had planned a 9 day trip but unfortunately had to cut it back to 4 days instead. I had an ambitious schedule but I should be able to see at least 6 waterfalls. Huh.
I only gained 2.5 pounds over the summer. Not too bad at all. But I knew I had a big hike upcoming. For the prior six weeks I worked out extremely hard and lost that 2.5 pounds plus an additional 2 pounds. I feel as though I am in the best shape I have been in 24 years. My wife thinks I am too thin. I guess she likes a chubby man, but what she does not understand is that 10 pounds makes a huge difference in backpacking. I feel I am ready to tackle anything now. I remember many years ago when I was out of shape, my friend and I went up Brokeoff mountain for sunset. He had along a couple young friends in their early 30’s who zipped up the mountain like there was no tomorrow. I made it up to the top but there was no way I could come even remotely close to keeping up with those young’uns. Now 15 years later, although I am much older, I feel like I could actually keep up with them. Or very close anyway. And this trip would be a tough one: 17 miles. 11 miles (with big elevation gain). 12 miles (with big elevation gain). 16 miles. Something like that.
It is a long drive to the trailhead at Courtright Reservoir. I arrived at 9 and started my hike at 9:15am. A bit later than I hoped but it was all right. There were no bugs at the trailhead but I decided to take my bug spray anyway. I would not regret this decision. (I almost left it). There are not supposed to be mosquitoes in October. That is why I like hiking at this time of year.
It is a 17 mile hike to my first campsite on the North Fork Kings River. It is a gentle climb with 1600 ft. elevation gain. The trail is mostly very good. I saw just one couple on the first day and one guy on the last day. No one else for the entire 4 days. I felt good on the hike. The last hour with the final uphill push to the camp was a bit rough (fatigued) but otherwise it was very good. I arrived at camp ahead of schedule even with the late start.
There were mosquitoes. Strike one. How the heck can there be mosquitoes? There was a winter storm last weekend. There was a hard freeze here at this elevation. All the mosquitoes should be good and dead. There should not be any! It was actually very frustrating to me. I hike at this time of year because it is very pleasant and there are no bugs. It is not pleasant when there are mosquitoes. They are so annoying. Argh!
I went down to see the waterfall. Strike two. It was very disappointing. The North Fork Kings River had a good flow, but this particular waterfall needs a lot of water to look decent. It probably needs to be at flood stage for it to look very good. At medium flows it is not even worth taking a photo. I would not really even call it a waterfall. I guess I should come back at high flow and see if it makes a difference. I’m not sure I will ever be back but who knows.
Now for the other things that went wrong on this trip … let’s see … my watch strap broke. Not a problem. One of the zippers on my day pack broke. Not a problem. My first aid scissors broke. A bit of a problem but I was able to use my knife to cut the moleskin. My sleeping pad failed. A huge problem. It had a very small leak and I could not figure out where it was coming from. The ground was too cold (and hard) to sleep on without a pad. This was a major issue. I put my backpack down and slept on it. This was very uncomfortable as you can imagine but I actually slept quite well the first two nights. The third night not quite so well. I should have just gone home after the first night and I thought about it considerably but I decided to continue on. I really really really did not want to go home. That would have been horrible. Instead, I would just suck it up and sleep on my backpack each night.
There was one other major thing that went wrong. We’ll talk about it in the next post.
In the morning I got up early, had my breakfast and coffee, and continued up the trail. Almost immediately the trail deteriorated. Up to this point it was great, very easy to follow, smooth, no blowdowns. Now it was very difficult. There were a ton of blown down trees to negotiate. The trail was very indistinguishable at times. I persevered and it got a bit better up to Portal Lake. It took longer than I hoped getting this far.
From here on there was no trail. The rest of the hike over Mantle Pass and down into Blue Canyon would be cross country but I was not expecting it to be too difficult. It was horribly difficult. It is 1000 ft. up to the top of the pass. Straight up. This part was tough but not unexpectedly tough. Does that make sense? I knew it would be a tough climb but it was straight forward. The pass is just under 11,000 ft. elevation. (about 10, 970 ft.). Once over the pass you have now crossed into Kings Canyon National Park. There are no signs. The other side down into Blue Canyon was absolutely brutal beyond brutal. I actually thought it would be a fairly easy descent. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. The descent is about 900 ft. off trail and then another 800 ft. on trail. It was extremely rocky the entire way. The rocks were big. It was very tricky walking on them. It was tremendously slow going. It was maddening. Was it ever going to end?
I finally made it down to Blue Canyon Creek and found a campsite. It was quite late now. Much later than planned. I had wanted to go down to the waterfalls in the evening but I did not have time. I only had time to go down to the upper falls (shown here). Upper Blue Canyon Falls is a gorgeous 40 ft. drop. It was a lovely evening at Blue Canyon in Kings Canyon National Park (except for the mosquitoes).
I slept fairly well in the car. The first time I’ve slept in the new Yeti. I got up at sunrise and prepared for the short hike down to the middle and lower falls of Patterson Creek (and one other one as well).
It is a little brushy but not “too difficult”. The biggest obstacle is the HUGE poison oak which is unavoidable. I was already going to get it bad so I may as well continue on the hike.
The lower falls is 306 ft. high and the middle falls is 121 ft. high. The middle falls is shown here. I liked both these waterfalls but again they would be much better at higher flows.
I returned to the car and then made the long drive home. I was so tired when I got home that I went to bed at 5:30PM and slept for 11 hours. I don’t know why I was so tired because I thought I had a decent sleep in the car but nonetheless I could not keep my eyes open past 5:30pm. That 11 hour sleep felt very good.
I was not planning to come here at all this year but a late season April storm messed up my plans. I guess I should say it just delayed my plans a bit because with 2-3 feet of new snow on the ground I would not be able to get to where I wanted to go this weekend. I decided to drive down to the Central Sierra for the weekend instead. The waterfalls here should be flowing very well, I determined, and I had not seen them before. Humph.
It is a five hour drive to Balch Camp and I arrived a bit before noon. I drove up to Patterson Creek Falls to check it out first. I would be returning in the morning to take photos but I just wanted to see it and also see if I could get down to the lower falls. I was very disappointed in the flow of the creek. It is a small drainage but with recent rain and snow melt it should be flowing a lot better than this. I was expecting a lot more. Sigh. I tried getting up closer to the waterfall but found it impossible due to very thick brush. A roadside photo is the best you can do here. Brush and poison oak were the major themes for the weekend (and perhaps, my life). The poison oak here is HUGE. In fact it was so big I did not even think it was poison oak at first. Poison oak does not get this big, does it? Ah well, tell that to my itchy body when I got back home.
I retreated back down the hill to Dinkey Creek. I wanted to backpack a short distance in to the creek and then hike up to a waterfall on Dinkey Creek. It was supposed to be a VERY EASY HIKE. There is a well defined trail on Google Earth. In fact it was supposed to be so easy and short (only a mile) I wondered if I should even do it. (I usually like hiking longer when I am backpacking).
The trail started out ok but it was already overgrown. The grasses were very long, above my knees. At least I could follow it (so far). Thankfully there were no ticks. It could have been disastrous if there were any of those buggers. Everything changed pretty quickly. The trail down to the creek was now completely overgrown with a huge amount of brush and deadfall. This is an easy hike? It was not even worth the effort to go down especially when I would have to hike this four times (I would have to come back up to continue to the waterfall). I decided to retreat and hike straight out to the waterfall and camp there. I was not very sure there would even be camping at the waterfall but maybe that trail would be better. Again, it was supposed to be a very easy and well defined trail. Again, it was completely overgrown and very difficult. How did this trail get so overgrown in such a short time? It makes no sense to me. I only made it half way to the waterfall and I was spent. I tried to continue but I was too tired. It was not getting any easier and if there was no place to camp ahead then I would be in trouble (plus, there was no way I could get to the other waterfalls in the morning if I had to hike back on this horrible trail). I decided I would retreat and just sleep in my car at Patterson Creek.
I slowly hiked back to the car and then drove up to Patterson Creek where I made my dinner on the rocks by the creek, and slept in the car.
Patterson Creek Falls is 925 ft. high in two tall tiers. It definitely needs to be seen very early in the spring. At least I got to one waterfall on this trip. Would I see more in the morning?
It was 17.8 miles back to my car in Crescent Meadow. Most of it was downhill but still a lot of elevation gain (about 1800 ft.). This is a huge day hike for me. I have only done that much maybe once or twice before. I had enough food to spend an additional night but I was ready to go home. I wanted to make sure that I was back to my car and home that night. There was nothing else I needed to see (I was just backtracking on the same trail), and the mosquitoes were out now with a full invasion force (and I was out of mosquito repellent – I did not bring enough of it). Basically, I just wanted to go home. I was up at 4:30AM and on the trail by 5:30AM. Even at this early hour there were mosquitoes out. I hoped by the time I lost some elevation they would all be gone, however I had some off and on for the entire hike back (mostly, it was not too bad except in a few areas).
Along the way I saw three more waterfalls (including this one on Lone Pine Creek). This makes the total for the trip to be 11 waterfalls in 6 days. Not too shabby.
You may be wondering how my feet did on this trip. If you remember, I have had injured feet this spring. On the last couple backpacking trips I did, I was in so much pain on the day following the trip that I literally could not even walk. During the trips, usually they (one or both feet) were sore in the morning, but then loosened up once I got hiking, but on a few days my feet were hurting for the whole day. Afterwards though, is when I had the pain, but it was just for about one day and then it was fine. However, in between trips I did not do any other day hiking or exercise as I normally would do. I wanted to have complete rest for the next trip. But those were just 2 or 3 days trips. The High Sierra Trail was to be my biggest trip of the year. Six days in the wilderness. How would my feet be after a couple days on the trail? Would I make it back or be stranded miles from anywhere? Even the day before I started this trip I went to a couple stores and my feet were hurting. This was not a good sign.
Well … the answer is that my feet were completely fine for the entire trip! I had almost no issues at all. I think there were just a couple days where they were a bit sore in the morning but were fine after I started hiking. Even the last day which was a huge 18 mile day I had no problems. The day after I got home my feet were sore but nothing as bad as the previous trips. Was it a miracle? Was it because I took ibuprofen every morning? I think it was probably a bit of both, honestly. I am sure the ibuprofen helped, but I think God helped as well. Otherwise, I would have been stranded 18 miles from my car and not able to hike back.
I made very good time on the hike back to the car. I estimated I would be back by 3:30PM but it was 2:30PM when I finished the hike. I was tired without a doubt.
And … it all ended with a beautiful surprise …
Literally … within the last two minutes of my six day hike … I finally saw a bear! There was a baby bear sleeping by a tree just off the trail, right before the parking lot. I would not have even seen it at all except that someone else pointed it out to me. I did not even see it at first after she pointed to it. It was in my head that it was a light brown colored bear for some reason, probably because all the trees were that color and so I was looking for a brown bear hiding beside the brown trees. Then it finally lifted its head and I saw that it was a dark brown colored (almost black) bear! It stood up, stretched, and then flopped back down on the ground. So cute! And I got it all on video. I was so happy to see him.
I drove out of the park. I stopped in Fresno for pizza. I drove home. Good night day 6.
