Goal for the day: Palisade Lakes or Beyond

Since there wasn’t much to see around my campsite, I made a point to have breakfast, pack my gear, and get an early start. I was on the trail by 6:30am.

First part of the hike down to the Middle Fork Kings River Trail junction was nice, but uneventful. There, I saw the ruins of an old stone bridge. Looked like an old route for the Middle Fork Trail.

Then I had to climb up to Deer Meadow. It wasn’t steep, so it just took time.

When I entered Deer Meadow, I saw a big buck walking ON the JMT. He actually was walking on it until he saw me and did the usual 60 feet of social distancing. As I walked the long way around a fallen tree trunk, he showed off by jumping over it and continuing down the JMT in front of me. God, I hate a hiker who just can’t stand hiking behind someone else and races ahead of me. 🙂 I saw it again a little further up, well ahead of me by that point.

Then the hell of the Golden Staircase began.

More like the Tarnished Switchbacks.

These switchbacks looked bad on the map AND in person. Rough going and it would have been nice to tackle these first thing in the morning as originally planned.

It’s hard to say why these bugged me so much, but there were a lot of spots where the trail wasn’t obvious where it was going. And several spots where you thought you could see where it went, only to have the trail extend out in the opposite direction for what seemed an eternity. And then it turned around and went up the route you thought it was going to go in the first place.

Maddening.

Fortunately, the bottom half eventually gave way to a more straightforward trail (in places) that was a little more logically laid out. It really didn’t change my conclusion that I HATED these switchbacks

Unfortunately, a storm seemed to be chasing me up the switchbacks. Only good thing about the cloud cover was it kept the sun from frying my brain since there was almost no tree cover anywhere along this trail ever since I left Deer Meadows.

I finally made it to Lower Palisade Lake and with the skies looking scary and a couple claps of thunder in the distance, I decided pushing it to Upper Palisade Lake was a bad idea. The last six days had taught me not to push my luck with rain.

Following a small use trail up from the lake’s edge, I found a great campsite overlooking the lake and the surrounding mountains before the rain could start.

But instead of rain pouring down as soon as I got the tent up, the skies cleared up and the sun started to bake me. After the long climb and after getting a sniff of my T-shirts and/or my body (probably both), I decided to take a swim. Ahhhhhhhh…

I washed my smelliest clothing and shampooed my hair away from the lake as well.

After dinner, it started to rain. 🙂 But it took 3 hours instead of the 30 minutes it had taken the previous 3 days. 🙂 Really not sure if that was better or not.

The rain wasn’t as bad as the last 2 nights and it was over before sunset so I could enjoy the light show.

And it was a spectacular sunset from where I was. I had chosen my campsite well. A good sunset tends to recharge me after a long day on the trail.

Over the past couple of days, I had started to notice that I was having problems sucking water from my Camelbak bladder. I could get water, but it seemed like I had to suck the water all the way from the bladder, through the filter, and the hose each time I wanted a drink. I tried some adjustments on the trail and at camp the previous night, including back flushing the filter to get any dirt or particulates out of the filter. Helped a bit, but it didn’t work as well as it should. I spent a little time checking the hoses, trying different configurations on where the filter was, and even using my backup water squeeze bottle that I carry for emergencies to see how it worked with the filter. That could become a problem.

Even with 3 days less food to carry, I still was getting some right hip pain when I’m carrying my backpack. It helps to shift and adjust the straps as I walked, so hopefully it doesn’t affect my trek.

10 miles hiked, 7:45 hours, 3,200 feet climbed
146 total miles hiked on the JMT

Highlights:
• Switchbacks that were worse than switchbacks
• Lower Palisade Lake
• Sunset!
• Daily Goal Achieved! (barely)