Tuesday September 9, 21.5mi/34.6km

Kern Canyon at Rattlesnake Creek (388.5/6590ft) to Colby Lake (410.0/10620ft) (CA)

I start off just before 7am, and it feels really cold. I’d guess about 40°F.

The Kern River Canyon is quite deep, so even 2 hours after sunrise, the sun still hasn’t made it down to the bottom of the canyon.

This part of the trail also coincides with the High Sierra Trail, and it’s very well maintained.

This has to be one of the most unique bridges I’ve ever seen, it uses a massive boulder as part of its structure.

I get to the Kern Hot Springs at 8:30, there’s no one around and I have it to myself.

The little tub is empty, and after I move the plug from the fill spout and put it in the drain, it fills up in about 5 minutes.

It feels so nice to sit in the hot springs in the cold morning, just relaxing and reading. There’s a bunch of graffiti on the wooden fence, I wonder if the vice president was here 33 years ago?

Once the sun crests over the canyon wall, I leave the hot spring and hike on wonderful trail for the rest of the morning.

There’s a campsite where the High Sierra Trail splits from my route, I decided to use that for my lunch spot. It’s right next to the Kern River, which at this point is nothing more than a little creek.

And then I start to climb up, up, up to Colby pass.

After reading Krista’s journal about their hike through here in July, I was preparing for it to be brushy, but it looked like a trail crew had come through recently and trimmed back all the brush. I enjoyed a ridiculously wide hiking corridor through the Manzanita.

Pretty quickly, I climbed a thousand feet, and just started to feel like alpine Sierra again.

Including the classics like the high Sierra meadows.

And hiking on giant slabs of granite.

I hadn’t seen people all day, even on the popular High Sierra Trail. But now, I was on a trail that almost no one hikes and I saw a German couple, two women on a loop hike, and a guided group of seven people. Crazy! The people in the guided group were sooo stoked about being out here, it was contagious, and I felt like I flew uphill for the next few miles. I always like seeing these signs because it means I’ve made it up to 10,000 ft elevation.

The final alpine meadow before the steep climb up to Colby Pass.

The climb up to the pass was pretty steep, it gained 1,800 ft in about 2 miles.

It was pretty chilly up at that elevation, but I was working pretty hard on the steep uphill so it evened out. I got to the top of the pass at 5:30, put on a bunch of layers and then took some time to enjoy all the views.

The requisite selfie atop the pass.

The descent down to Colby Lake was even steeper, there were dozens and dozens of tiny little switchbacks.

I descended 1400 ft and about a mile and a half. Yikes. The lake was looking pretty nice though, despite some wildfire smoke in the distance.

I was relieved to be down at the lake, since it was my plan camping spot and my knees were done for the day.

Looking back at the ridgeline I had just come over:

I had another pretty sweet camping spot in the pines, it’s hard to get a bad camping spot in the High Sierras.

It will probably get pretty cold up here at 10,600 ft elevation, but I think I’ll sleep pretty well after a long day and 6,000 ft of elevation gain.