Kern peak is very prominent on the Southern end of the Sierra Nevada. I had looked at it often enough from different directions so that it was time to climb it.
Since it’s quite a drive for me I added some warm-up hikes on the drive-up day and cool down hikes on the drive-home day.
Day 1: I drove up to the area and made a little detour to Smith Mountain. One can drive quite close on paved forest roads so that the total hike was only about 3.7 miles with ~400ft elevation gain. Part of that was on a motocross trail of which there are a lot in the area. The summit block required a little climb. Afterwards I drove to Blackrock trailhead. Since it was only 4pm I decided to take a nap and then walk up Blackrock Mountain. A 1.5 mile round trip with ~640ft elevation gain. After that little hike I prepared a big bowl of noodles for dinner to get ready for the next day’s big hike.
Day 2: I woke up around 5:30 and started hiking at 6:15. The trail descends to Casa Vieja meadow, that’s some 700ft that need to be climbed at the end of the day. From there I followed the signs to Red Rocks Meadow. The trails are in the forest and along meadows and therefor nice and shady. Except for some places where fires had destroyed the forest. I made good progress and after about 3h arrived at Red Rocks Mdws. I took a nice break to fuel for the following climb. It’s about 2700 ft of climbing from here to the peak.
I followed the Templeton Mdws. trail. Clearly this trail does not see much traffic and in places it was rather faint. In one meadow I lost it for a bit since the cows in the area had made a mess of any trail. [I’ll have to find out what’s up with all the cows in the Golden Trout Wilderness?]. After I found the trail again I followed it to about 10,200 ft. There I left it and went straight up a slope to a plateau like area. Along this fairly flat section I got my first real look of the peak. It took me to a talus slope which I had to climb for about 400ft to reach a gentle ridge that took me all the way up to the peak.
There are some remains of the old fire lookout tower up there. Apparently this was California’s highest lookout. Among the debris is the old stove that still looks quite good. Views from up here were great with no clouds at all. There was some haze way in the distance that prevented me from seeing the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains that are visible from here on a very clear day. I got my first close-up views of Whitney et. al. for this season. The summit register was very new, from May this year, but the entry before mine from a couple of weeks earlier was a bit unusual as it was from the Golden Trout Wilderness manager. He said “Boy – so many trails to maintain”. Guess he came up here to survey his domain 😉 After a nice lunch break it was time to head back. Since it was a warm day I was almost out of water and looking forward to fill up at one of the streams on the way back.
The return hike was uneventful and I filled up with water that was just gushing out of the ground at aptly named River Spring. There is a big rock and water just comes out of the ground. I didn’t bother to filter this water even with cows in the area. It clearly came to the surface right there.
During the entire hike I had not met a single person. I did see some deer, plenty of squirrels and chip monks and some fresh bear tracks. After 28 miles, ~5500 ft elevation gain and just over 12h I arrived back at the truck. Ready for a cold beer! As I was taking my shoes of I was surprised how high the super fine dust had made it up my legs inside my long pants. After cleaning that up I had a good meal and crawled into my sleeping bag.
Day 3: Rather than driving home directly I decided to take a detour over the Angeles Crest highway. There are some points that I want to visit. So on this trip I stopped at Mount Sally (1.6 miles, ~400ft elevation gain) and Mount Akawie (1.5 miles, ~400 ft gain).
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