This was a pretty great time. A 3 day backpacking trip, some 23 miles over the three days, from Roads End in Kings Canyon National Park to Paradise Valley, June 8 – 10, 2007. Lowest elevation ~5000′, and highest somewhere between 7500 and 8000′, so this wasn’t really the high country.
The Sphinx
this section of trail is deceptively wide and flat
Erin, Joe, and I began this trip with a nice drive up to Kings Canyon. Alas, it took a bit longer to get there than we had initially expected, so we didn’t get to the park itself until after dark, which meant we couldn’t see any of the surrounding scenery. We also had a bit of fun when we got there and didn’t quite know what to make of the entrance station area (turns out it is a detour from the main road, but we couldn’t quite figure out where we wanted to be going, etc). Eventually, however, we made it into the park, and even though we drove a bit too far (all the way to the end!) we eventually found the turnoff for our campsite. We set up our tents, and more or less crashed. I recall being very vaguely awake when Nick, Jen, and Liana showed up.
some nice CCC (or convict?) work.
In the morning we proceeded to pack up all our stuff, and got ourselves to the ranger station at Roads End (aptly named!), where we found it hadn’t mattered that we were running a bit behind schedule, since the permits ranger was an hour later as well! As we couldn’t have picked up our permit any earlier , it worked out perfectly. We picked up our permit, got a talking to about bear activity, weighed our packs on the portable hanging scale Joe had brought, and we were off. I had figured out that morning, much to my chagrin, that I hadn’t actually managed to *bring* my freshly charged camera batteries with me, so I ended up using Joe’s new camera for the length of the trip.
The trail starts out pretty easy, just walking along the bottom of the canyon, more or less entirely flat, which is a nice start to the day. Gets your blood flowing a bit. You eventually reach a trail junction for the sphinx creek/paradise valley split, and we took the left hand up to paradise as was, you know, the plan.
This is where the uphill in the route began. It’s definitely a canyon like! Trail goes up, and then some beautiful stone steps (CCC work I think?) and then we reached Mist Falls, where we stopped and had lunch. Beautiful, really rather much so. And, shockingly, misty! In fact, we had to back off from the original place we had been sitting because we were getting just a little bit too damp.
eating lunch at mist falls
After that, there was a very steep set of switchbacks (which was most of a thousand feet of gain, I think), but that was the greatest part of the elevation gain in the trip, actually. Though it was very nice to be done with that part and enter the bottom of Paradise Valley itself.
Given that climb, we were pretty tired when we hit the first campsite. So we stopped to take a little break there, at which point some other people who were camped there came up to us and asked us if we wouldn’t mind camping somewhere else, since they had been hoping for some solitude! I mean, sure, that’s what going outdoors is often about, but this was the first campsite on a fairly popular route in a fairly popular area. I’m not sure what they were expecting 6.5 miles from a trailhead. Anyway, whatever. If that was how we felt, we were happy to keep moving – probably (it was only 3 PM). We sent Joe on ahead to see how the middle section would be, and took a break during that time.He came back, and reported that it wasn’t all that far, and that it was pleasant.
the sphinx. mmm, granite.
While we’d been sitting around, Nick was talking to a guy who had hiked up to do some photography about various camera lenses. Nick was discussing how he had recently been debating between a zoom lens and a wide angle lens, and had decided on the wide angle lens, and this guy pulled the crazy zoom lens out of his fannypack to let Nick try it out! So it was a productive, as well as a restful break. Also, we saw a deer. And then, after Joe’s travels, we continued on to the Middle Paradise Valley campground where we set up for the night.
This first night was great fun, though there were some strange experiences with creepy deer following us around, and licking soil where we had peed, and generally circling our campground. We asked the ranger about this lately, and he told us that the area soil was pretty salt poor, they they lick the urine to get their fix. Fun!
meadows are always nice
We used the campground as a sort of mini “base camp” since we were planning on staying there two nights. So the next day, we left most of our stuff behind and set off on a day hike further up the valley. The first notable part of this hike was hitting the Upper Paradise Campground. (I previously failed to mention that these were fairly built up campsites as “backcountry” goes; they had fire rings and logs on rocks for benches, and clearly marked campsites, and toilet pits. Alternately, I guess they were pretty spartan for built up campsites, whichever way you prefer 🙂
We stopped by this area for a while, as there was an attractive bridge over the river, and it generally seemed like a good place to stop and eat some lunch. We then continued up on the trail, with the nominal goal of reaching a suspension bridge that had been mentioned to us.
bridge at upper paradise; seems to be a lot of photography going on!
We kept going for a while, but as it got further into the afternoon, we realized we probably weren’t going to be able to make it to this theoretical suspension bridge. In the end , this turned out to be a smart call, since we found out later than this bridge was miles away from where we had gotten to, so it wouldn’t really have worked out either way. So we took a break around 2.30 PM, and turned around from that point about half an hour later. We made it back to our campground at 5 PM or so, which gave us plenty of time to relax and make dinner and enjoy the company.
The next morning we basically got up, packed, and left. It took us just over 3.5 hours to get back, as opposed to the 6 to arrive. I suppose downhill + motivated + way less stopping will have some sort of effect 🙂 Although the last bit before arriving at the trailhead was a lovely meadow that was much, much hotter than we expected, and longer than we remembered. Still, an overall awesome trip; the Sierra Nevada never disappoints. Or at least it hasn’t to this date.
large out here! there is a person for scale in the image
We made a couple of stops on the way out, first to change our clothes, and then at the village to grab pizza and beer. We then just headed on out and home – but now’s the time to raise the glass to next year!
