June 27th South Fork Kings River to Big Pete Meadows

Slept in lazily. The ranger we had talked to last night said our up coming pass (Mather Pass) tends to be quite icy first thing in the morning and there had been several injuries this year when people tried to get over the pass in the morning. He recommended avoiding going over the pass before 11am, so there was no point in waking up early.

Had several more creek fords on the way to Mather Pass. We caught up with Rachel near the approach coming along with Four Cheese and Sangria. There were still several snow patches on the south side of the pass - a couple of them looking sketchy. So we had to scramble up the loose scree. Tom felt right at home on the loose rock, but I struggled. For some reason I do a lot better on snow.

Eventually we all made it up to the pass. On the north side, there was a lot more snow. Tom & I led. Sure enough, just as the ranger had said, the snow was still quite hard at 10:30am. Tom & I were once again thankful for our microspikes which allowed us to cruise over the snow quickly.

The Palisades Lakes just below Mather Pass were beautiful.I just cannot get over how beautiful the Sierras are! Tom enjoyed yodeling throughout the basin as he had done in just about every other lake basin.

Unfortunately the fun ended and we headed down the "Golden Staircase" - several miles of non-stop rock steps. Although not fun going down, we were really glad not to be going up them.

After the rock steps, we hit a trail that had been destroyed by avalanches several years ago. The trail was in desperate need of trail work, I'm guessing the trail is so remote that the Park Service just decided to ignore it.

We finally found a nice big rock to have dinner on - away from the downed trees & bugs. After dinner we continued on muddy swampy trail and for the first time the mosquitoes finally got to swarm levels and we had to stop to put on DEET. Actually they were so bad that we had to keep walking while rubbing on the DEET.

Made it to camp at Big Pete Meadow just as the sun set. Met a nice French-Canadian couple - Strider and V, who are thru hiking as well. Also had the company of some way too friendly deer.