Marc's Blog: hiking - Kings Canyon: Alta To Silliman with Arturo and Johannes

π 2021-07-16 01:01 in Hiking

Thanks to Arturo for planning the trip and Johannes for getting the permit. This was a challenging hike, a bit over 50 miles in 4 days, including some cross country that was quite tough (steep elevation, progress of half a mile per hour was not unusual). I'm always a bit self conscious because I like not to be the weakest link, but they are both stronger hikers than me, and I managed to show up with a cold that got worse and turned into a bacterial infection due to exertion and high altitude.
It took a lot of caffeine pills and bags of energy goo to get through most days, and especially on the first day, my body really rebelled at the end as I pushed it way beyond what I should have (but we had to make camp, so that was the only way out). The other days were a bit less tough but still kicked my butt, and I was quite thankful to have antibiotics on the 3rd day.

Here are the stats:

                        Move Ovrl      Avg Max
     Dist    Time  Move Avg  Avg  Cal  HR  HR  Climb  Desc
Day1 10.30   8h04  6h21 1.6  1.3  2859 129 162  3300   807
Day2 11.79  10h13  7h36 1.6  1.2  3113 113 141  2123  4113
Day3 16.55   9h45  6h21 2.1  1.9  2859 112 142  2936  2551
Day4 13.07   6h13  4h47 2.2  2.4  1668 114 142  1654  3891
Tot  51.71  34h15 25h05 1.8  1.7 10499 117 146 10013 11362

I still tried to be lighter, this is what I had:

5lbs Fanny pack

22lbs backpack without water or food (33lbs with water and 6lbs food)

total load was 38lbs, probably too much but the lightest I've been

But it was still overweighed compared to Arturo and Johannes, so I was the weakest link, before adding the part where I got sick. Ooops.

Day 1: Wolverton to Alta Peak Cross Country Short of Moose Lake

Arturo and I drove to Fresno the day before to be a lot closer for the next morning:

very low water level

That next morning, we drove from Fresno to Kings Canyon and had a look at the visitor center and some big trees:

We then started the hike early enough as it was going to be a long day.

We joined the High Sierra Trail

It was all nice and good, so sine we were doing well enough (although I wsa already using caffeine and energy gel), so we climbed Alta Peak:

By the top, my body was kind of running on fumes, but with a few breaks, I made it up there. Unfortunately, by then we got some bad intel and the people with more of a brain than me, From there, going cross country, which was quite tough when I was:

terrain was tough

day was getting late, and I was really exhausted with the cold

going down was tough

I was the slowest in the group

finally arrived

I tried to smile, but damn, I was exhausted

this is what we came down from

home sweet home

OMG, such a cute pikka

Dinner time

Day 2: Alta Peak Lake to Roaring River

The next morning, we had a quick breakfast and ready for a long hike day and another tough cross country:

basic accomodations for Johannes :)

another Pikka came to see us

Johannes raced us to the lake

found a nice frog

I was still sick, my SPO2 was pretty low, I hope it was not that low

found this weird thing slithering in the grass, what is it?

multiple fires, one of the planes fighting the fires

still more cross country

beautiful lake after lake

time for another swim

lovely valley

finding the trail back was a bit rough at the end

day was getting long, but I wanted to push on to catch up on the time we lost the previous day and my being slow

finally setup camp

Day 3: Roaring River to Lost Lake

good morning

roaring river ranger station, we hung out for a bit

astronaut ice cream snack

he got to lost lake

time for swim

long day

Day 4: Lost Lake

Last day, I was on antibiotics, which helped a bit, but I was happy to get out. It was my fastest day, except for losing the trail and going backwards for a while: