The ranger who issued my permit in Mineral King was the last
person I saw on Friday. I bopped over Glacier Pass, over
Black Rock pass, and down to Little Five Lakes, where I made
camp. On Saturday, I crossed Big Arroyo on a fallen log,
then walked up the High Sierra Trail to the base of Big
Kaweah. 3200 feet of talus took me to the 13802' summit.
I bathed in the sublime vistas of the jagged, nearby Kaweah
Peaks Ridge, the vertiginous trenches of the Big Arroyo and
the Kern, and the way the Eastern Sierra looked like the
ripped and crumpled edge of the world. I returned to Little
Five spent but satisfied. Sunday, I went out the way I came
in, cross country and in quiet solitude.
Greg Johnson adds:
You get 100 points for brevity, and 200 for using
"bopped" and "vertiginous" in the same paragraph.
Rob Langsdorf adds:
That's a long way to go for one peak. When I did that area I
made two week long trips and cleaned out the area. Otherwise
it would have been about a dozen trips to get them all and I
would have still had to do at least one multi day trip to
get Kern Point and Picket Guard.
