Wednesday September 10, 21.8mi/35.1km

Colby Lake (410.0/10620ft) to Bubbs Creek Campsite (431.8/6240ft) (CA)

When I was packing up my tent, I noticed a bunch of ice crystals on it. Frost!

I knew it was damp by the lake, but it didn’t feel quite cold enough for frost. Everything in the tent was damp from moisture too, I planned on drying everything at lunch. I had 11 miles of downhill hiking, so it was a pretty easy morning.

The sunrise was starting to creep over the mountaintops, I was looking forward to it warming up the valley.

Looking into the valley below me was a unique sight, I could look down at the clouds below me.

The trail gradually descended through the alpine, across big slabs of rock, and I slowly got closer to the cloud layer.

I love when they build the trail like this, just small rocks outlining the edges of the trail across big slabs.

Further down, I skirted around Big Wet Meadow, whose name was certainly accurate. The grasses were damp and my shoes became quite wet.

After a couple hours, the sun finally made it down into the bottom of the valley. The Sierras really are an amazing place.

I followed Roaring Creek downstream all morning, and stopped for lunch at a trail junction, which would begin the uphill climb. As I was sitting there eating a wrap, a horse packer rode by with his horse train.

A little while later, a woman on the trail maintenance crew hiked by. She was eyeing all my stuff that I laid out to dry in the Sun, so I commented ” just a small yard sale”, and she replied “no judgment”. Haha! After lunch I had a few hours of uphill hiking, to Avalanche Pass.

The trails have been very nice all day, so I made pretty good time. It was a little cold at the top of the 10,000-ft pass, as some puffy clouds had moved in and were partially obscuring the Sun. I passed a group of three guys backpacking a loop, we only exchanged a few sentences and kept moving to stay warm. The downhill portion of the trail was a little less maintained but still pretty nice.

The descent along Spinks Creek was simply impressive, I could see the whole Bubbs Creek Canyon and Kings River Canyon below me.

And the neat little Sphinx rock formation.

I followed Sphinx Creek all the way downhill, on some very impressively engineered trail.

The trail was blasted into the side of a steep rock face, or built onto it, with thousands of stairs, and a hundred switchbacks. As the afternoon cooled down the puffy clouds started colliding with the mountaintops.

Even though I had been here before, I was really quite surprised at how deep the Kings Canyon was.

I arrived at the Bubbs Creek campsite a little after 6pm, which was my planned camping spot. I couldn’t continue further, as camping isn’t legally allowed within 4 miles of the Roads End Trailhead, plus it had a bear box and I had just seen a bear.

Video link

When I got to the campsite, I was surprised to see a dozen tents already there, with probably 15 people around. They were all very friendly and a few invited me over to bring my dinner over to their campfire and chat for a while, so I decided to be social. I met a family from Minneapolis, a postman from Fresno, and two ladies on their honeymoon.

I stayed up way later than my usual bedtime, but finally told them all good night around 9:30 and passed out.