Can't Decide...Taking Votes: Mineral King or Onion Valley

[franklin411]

Hello all,
I can't decide between the following trips, arriving Fri leaving Mon. Which would you choose? Your vote will be appreciated!

I've been to SEKI twice this summer: both times at Lodgepole. Loved it, partly because the weather was fabulous and partly because I liked the flush toilets, hot showers, good food, and cold beer!

Mineral King:
* I've only spent one night at Mineral King. I arrived around 7 PM and went to sleep, I got up at 3 AM and drove to the trailhead, I tried and failed to summit Sawtooth Peak, and I left at 3 PM. So I never really saw that much.
* I can car camp and dayhike
* I'll be more comfortable: I can have beer, popcorn, a camp chair, and use a vault toilet
* Mineral King is a 5 hr drive and traffic is expected since I drive through LA.

Plan:
Fri: Drive up and make camp.
Sat: 2nd attempt at Sawtooth, and if successful and time permits, traverse to Sawtooth Pass and descend to Columbine Lake. Return to MK, eat, have a few beers, pop some corn.
Sun: Explore south towards Franklin Lakes, White Chief Mountain, etc... Return to MK, eat, have a few beers, pop some corn.
Mon: Hike anywhere nice and easy...6-10 miles r/t. Drive home.

Onion Valley:
* I've spent two nights at Onion Valley. Both times I arrived late, went to sleep, got up at 4-5 AM, hiked to Bullfrog Lake, hiked out, and drove home.
* All sites are taken at OV Fri/Sat night, so I'll only have Sun night in the campground. However, OV has flush toilets, and it's only a few mins to fast food in Independence.
* Since no sites are available, I'll be backpacking Fri and Sat night. I know how to backpack, but I get demoralized being alone and idle, and I never got used to the cat hole poop thing! Who knows though...maybe this will be the time I love it, possibly because I expect there will be more people around. I do like the dark skies!
* Onion Valley is a 4 hr drive and traffic is very unusual.

Plan: I have an overnight permit for Kearsarge Pass starting Saturday night. I'm going to assume I can change the date to Friday when I pick up my permit @ noon.

Fri: Hike as far in as possible: Charlotte Lake, Vidette Meadow, or the Center Basin junction with the JMT. Overnight.

Sat: Explore Center Basin. Pack up and move to Charlotte Lake.

Sun: Climb Mt. Rixford (primary choice) and/or Mt. Bago (backup). Pack up and hike out.

Mon: Hike to either Bench Lake to explore the approach to University Peak *but I won't attempt the summit solo*, or hike to Golden Trout lake. Drive home.

[franklin411]

Well shoot...just noticed a notice on recreation.gov. No piped water at Onion Valley until further notice, which means no faucets and no flush toilets. The Inyo National Forest website says they have vault toilets, which must mean they brought in port-a-potties?

[JeffH]

Onion Valley never has flush toilets. The piped water is in the campground, there are two streams available at that area for water.


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[franklin411]

Heh! I guess I was only at the official OV campground for one night, so I misremembered it as flush. The second time I was up there was after the campground had closed for the season, so we used the trailhead vault toilet.

Anyway, looks like the votes are in: 4 to 0 in favor of Mineral King, so I leave tomorrow! I'm excited to be exploring the area to the SW of Sawtooth, which I saw from the peak when I attempted it last time. The plan is:

Day 1: Drive up early, make camp, hike to one of the nearby lakes if time and weather permits. Hike back.

Day 2: Climb Sawtooth, and try to descend east via Sawtooth Pass. I say "try" because the NPS's latest posted conditions (8/11) say that the East side of Sawtooth Pass is still covered in icy snow. I'll try to explore some of the lakes if I can. Hike back.

Day 3: Hike towards Franklin Lakes/Pass/Farewell Gap etc... and see how far I can get. Hike back. Either drive to Lodgepole for a shower and some end-of-season pizza, or spend one more night in MK.

Day 4: Drive home. If I do Lodgepole I'll have to time it to avoid road construction delays or head out via Fresno. Blah.

Thanks for the votes!

[Harlen]

Hey Franklin,

Fast food? .... flush toilets? Well I suppose the two go together somewhat. I'd rather do without both ... but we come together again on the beer and popcorn.

I vote for Kearsarge, because from there you could do a day hike I've long wanted to do, come back and write to us about it, and I can enjoy it vicariously, and perhaps forego the real thing depending on how your story goes. Are you up for full day epics Franklin? Okay, over North Dragon Pass, down to Rae Lakes, up Clarence King, and back via the JMT to the K.Pass trail. Looks like at least 11-12 miles on the first leg up Mt. C.K., and then about 14 mostly trail miles on the way back to Onion Valley TH; so a trip of about 25 miles. This is the hardest version of the day trips from Onion Valley. You'll want a pre-dawn start, running shoes, and a headlamp for this one.

You have your choice of easier climbing trips too: up Gould (easy), Dragon (Harder), or Uni. Pk.- the last one has both a phenomenal view, and the potential to do a looping high route by going over K.Pass, and back via University Col. You can climb the west ridge, or the easier southwest slope from above Kearsarge Lakes, descend the easy slope, traversing over to Uni. Col. and down- about 14 miles for that one. You should note the description of Uni. Col in the current thread on the Worst and Scariest Back Country Passes. It may have gotten worse since I was up and down it. You should also check out the climb of Clarence King, noting that there is a summit block that presents a challenge to soloists.

Both places are fantastic, I hope you have a great trip.

[franklin411]

Thanks for the votes! @Harlen, You made a great case for Onion Valley, but I had already settled on Mineral King after a lot of indecisive back and forth, so I just went with it. However, if my friend decides she wants to go in October, we'll do Onion Valley then!

So here's a mini report:

Day 1: Arrival
Got to Cold Springs campground, which was about 1/2 full that night. Ended up with a very nice site next to the stream.

Day 2: Sawtooth
Planned to ascend Sawtooth Peak. Started at 6:45 AM. Hiked to upper Crystal Lake, where I encountered a cute girl who was solo backpacking. Traded contact info...hope that pans out!

I paid a price for the latter. I went cross country from upper Crystal towards upper Monarch Lakes, but I went too far to the West. I ended up right next to Mineral Peak. I could see part of the use trail leading up Sawtooth's SW slope, but there was still a fair amount of snow in the area where I recalled the trail going. Rather than backtracking and finding the right place to cross (and possibly looking stupid in front of the girl), I decided to scratch Sawtooth.

Instead, I descended via the NE and NW slopes of Mineral Peak to the Sawtooth Pass trail. I decided to climb to Sawtooth Pass and look over. At some point, I encountered two people coming down right when I got to a junction in the trail. Either I or they got a bit cornfuzzled and I ended up climbing one of the harder use trails going directly to Sawtooth Pass rather than the better/easier established trail to Glacier Pass. Oh well, I survived.

Got to the Pass, took in the views of Columbine Lake and Lost Canyon, and hiked out. Finished around 3:30 PM. Less grueling than it sounds...it helped that I had brought along a flask of rum.

Day 2: Franklin Lakes/Pass
This was less of an adventure, but I wanted something that was both exotic and on an established trail. A relatively uneventful 17 mile dayhike in 7 hours. I ran most of the downhill parts because I wanted to get to Lodgepole in time to enjoy a laid-back evening. Fabulous views from Franklin Pass, but it was a bit of a bummer that the trail didn't go very near Franklin Lake.

Spent the night at Lodgepole...I really enjoyed the pizza, the showers, the flush toilets, the hustle and bustle of a busy campground, and the college girls who camped across from me (no, nothing Penthouse Letters-worthy happened. But it still made for fun people-watching!).

Day 3: Foothills Dabble
I wanted to avoid the uncertainty of the 198 road construction, so I decided to leave Lodgepole at 6:30 AM. That put me at the construction zone around 6:50 AM, during the period when passage is controlled by a signal and opens every 20 mins rather than the 1x per hour pass-through after 7 AM.

I still wanted to get a little bit of hiking in, but not very much. The Park newsletter mentioned Paradise Creek, so I decided to walk on that for a bit. Like a good boy (following the newsletter's instructions), I parked at Hospital Rock and hiked along the road in, which was a downer. The creek was nice, but I decided to head back after getting to the wood bridge over the Middle Fork.

All in all, a fun trip. I hiked hard for two days and got to see pretty far into the backcountry. I compared my photos from when I almost climbed Sawtooth 3 years ago against the photos I took on Saturday, and it looks like I made the right call. It does look like the snow patch was covering the use trail, and even if it wasn't, I think that the melt from that snow likely would have made the granite slabs slick and dangerous.