Saturday night, August 1990; Chagoopa Plateau – Kern River Canyon
Luckily, despite our amateur job in stringing up our food, we heard no bears overnight. We are now a long way from help, and losing our food would be costly. The fourth day began as clear and blue as each of the previous ones. We have now passed the easternmost of the Kaweah Peaks and the trail has moved away from Big Arroyo, northeast onto the fertile Chagoopa Plateau. In another two miles we passed Sky Parlor Meadow, the campsite we’d been hoping to reach the night before, but this day was supposed to be an easy one and the extra distance would be easy to make up.
In another mile the downhill began to steepen. The trail dropped nearly 2000′ to the Kern River, easily the largest river we expected to encounter on this trip. Along the way, we reached a rather small meadow that reminds me more of Lombard Street in San Francisco than anything else. The meadow is drenched in sun, with summer flowers growing everywhere.
The nearly white trail steepens again, threading neat, symmetrical switchbacks through the meadow.
Shortly afterward the trail reaches Funston Creek and parallels it as it cascades into the valley below. I have heard Kern Canyon compared in impressiveness to Yosemite Valley itself – high praise indeed – but when we finally catch sight of its southern reaches it is not so dramatic as I’d hoped. It is deeply glaciated but not so sheer as Yosemite, and trees grow more or less continuously on the valley walls.
Incredibly, the trail steepens again on its final drop into the Kern Canyon. Two men with mules pass us on their way up. We come around a bend and catch our first glimpse of the northern section of the valley, and it is a good deal more impressive than the more southerly section we’d seen earlier, though still lacking the visual impact of Yosemite. Our view of this southern section is now blocked by the bend we’ve just come around, however, so we can’t make a direct comparison.
At the bottom is a large, sandy campsite, with a shaved-log gate across the trail dividing the area set aside for parties with horses from the rest. We search for faucets like those we’d seen at our first camp in vain. Some amenities are apparently not available more than one day’s trip into the backcountry. By now I am glad the park is named Sequoia and not Really-Beautiful-Mountains National Park: though we haven’t seen any sequoias since the first ten minutes of our hike, I think the park’s name has probably discouraged many more people from coming this deep into it, and I like it better that way. The elevation at the bottom is about the same as where we started hiking on the first day, and I am vaguely unhappy that we’ve worked so hard for all that altitude and had to give it all up again.
The Kern River is indeed the largest flowing water we’ve seen yet, but I still hesitate to think of it as a river. It looks at most to be a large creek, though such things are relative in California. I imagine at peak snowmelt in the spring it is somewhat friskier.
We crossed the river on a sturdy, welcoming bridge, no more than 50 paces long, on which I persuade Dad to have his picture taken.
On the other side the trail goes up a little way to Kern Hot Springs, where our map does not show a campsite but where the name leads me to hope that we will find one. We arrive in the late afternoon, having traveled a total distance of only 7 miles today, and easy going at that. I think we’ve needed the day off. A campground is indeed a few hundred feet beyond the spring.
The spring turns out to be no big deal – it is a small metal tub with room for only one person set into the hillside less than 100’ from the river. The tub has a fine view, as no trees stand close to it, but the water in it is neither hot nor particularly deep. I learn later, to my chagrin, that we didn’t know how to work it correctly – it would have been both hotter and deeper if we had pulled the wooden plug from the spring’s source and put it into the drain. I take a dip in the very cold river, then displace Dad for my turn in the spring. Despite our ignorance of how to properly operate it, it is still nice enough that I don’t want to get out.
We have company for the first time in the evening – a German named Klaus Peter or just Peter. We talk with him briefly and discover that his plans are similar to ours, so we expect to see him again further down the trail. Later that night, in the dark, I drag Dad down to the river and cut away at his ugly blister. By this time I have one of my own, though it isn’t in such bad shape. We clean them out, howling at the green soap and alcohol disinfectant pads, but we both feel better for it.
Backpacking With Family 