Backpacking in the Southern Sierras: Kearsarge Lakes to Golden Bear Lake

We are up shortly before 6 to blue skies, like you want to see. We end up packing the tent away wet because as we are still in the shade there's just no chance otherwise without waiting quite a while. Underway shortly before 8. We follow the trail to the lovely Bullfrog Lake. Since we were counting yesterday, and we're going to be spending some time on the JMT/PCT, we decide today to count the number of all other backpackers we see (Final score: 32). Past Bullfrog and the other nearby lakes we start to descend.

At around 3km we hit the JMT/PCT and follow that down, down. At one point a spectacular panorama opens up in front of us that fills greg with "wow!". Down, down we go, past Vidette Meadow, onwards under trees with quite good walking for a while. Parallel to Bubbs Creek - actually more of a river. We come upon a lovely block of granite in the sun and spread out the tent bits to dry while we have a snack. Very effective use of the sun. We continue on our way after the clouds move in. We've seen this show before, time to get a move on and get to our camp spot before any rain starts.

Onward and onward. We're looking for the turnoff of the old JMT towards Center Basin; we have a description and a very rough indication on the map, but we end up completely missing it (looking at the map and our GPX afterwards: the "scanned 7.5'" caltopo layer is very wrong about both where the trail comes in as well as the relative course of the *current* JMT/PCT and the stream coming down from the Golden Bear Lake; the OSM map and other layers seems pretty good), so we end up leaving the trail and heading up through the forest much too late. After ascending easy for a bit through the woods we start to encounter the stream we should be on the other side of. Crap. After some bushwhacking and crossing some pretty good talus and some pretty bad gravel above the stream (yuck! Plus greg loses his sunglasses at some point during this whole process) we find a good spot across and then just go straight until we hit the old trail (obvious at this point).

It's now very clear that it's going to be raining again soon and the thunder has already started. Quick quick across the bog and then up a bit to beautiful Golden Bear Lake. No time for appreciating though, need to get the tent up before the rain starts! We look around a bit and find the spot. Up goes the tent and we are moving the stuff in just as the rain starts. Again. :-)

This time it doesn't rain super hard and there are some breaks when we can get out and pump water, etc. We were in the tent by 13:30 and the rain was basically done by 15:30 or 16:00. We have a quick wash, it rains some more, and then by around 17:00 it's really done. We even get a bit of sun later as we're out making dinner. Lovely dinner in the sun, a post-dinner stroll, a lovely, lovely sunset (the upside of the clouds), and then into the tent for blog post writing and bed.

We saw loads of people at the beginning of the day, but after turning off the JMT/PCT we were completely alone. Yay!

Dinner: Coconut veggie curry. Very good backpacking food!


Track:

Stats: 13.5km, 560m up, 490m down.