Friday September 12, 24.2mi/39.0km

Copper Creek Trail (441.8/9040ft) to Palisade Creek (x/8030ft) (CA) +1.9 guidebook error

I woke up to amazingly clear skies and all the clouds and fog were gone.

I finished the big climb with another quick thousand feet, and then I was up in Granite Basin.

Hiking pleasant trail through alpine terrain in the morning sunlight, life is good.

I was almost up to Granite pass when I ran into a park ranger, who was coming from Granite Lake. We chatted for 10 minutes, he seemed genuinely curious about the Hot Springs Trail route I was hiking. I offered to show him my permit, he said he didn’t need to see it, he could look up my name in the database later. A few minutes after we parted ways, I ran into Mark, a backpacker from Oregon. We hiked up over Granite Pass together.

He was an interesting guy, talking about his Christmas tree farm and all the hikes he’s done, and how he’s out here on a 5-day loop hike for his 68th birthday. He was worried about staying in hiking shape, but I had trouble keeping up with him on the uphills. We parted ways at lunch, when I stopped to dry my sleeping bag and tent. It was still nice and sunny, but the usual afternoon clouds were starting to form.

After lunch I had a little bit of flat hiking and then it was all downhill, 4,000 ft. down to Simpson Meadow. I’m against people graffiti-ing signs but in this case it was actually helpful, since the distance wasn’t 5 miles, but closer to 7 miles. And no water!

The downhill started off nice and gentle, as the clouds really started to build up.

Pretty soon the sky was turning black.

The contrast between the Sunny half of the sky and the thunderstorm-y half was simply incredible.

There was thunder rumbling over my head, and after descending a couple of hours down many switchbacks, the thunder finally stopped. Once I got down to Simpson Meadow, it started to rain lightly.

From Simpson Meadow, the Hot Springs Trail turns left and follows the Middle Fork Kings River downstream. But, the big 50,000-acre Garnet fire is in that direction so I had come up with a detour. Instead, I will hike upstream along the MF Kings River, up up to the John Muir Trail, and follow that trail for 25 miles to where it reconnects with the Hot Springs Trail. So, I hiked 8 miles upstream along the river, the trail started off a little rough.

As I got higher up, the trail improved and it was quite dramatic to be hiking on a cliff above the river.

There were lots of little waterfalls and water slides.

I really enjoyed these parts of the trail, where it was blasted into the side of the rock.

Despite being very close to the MF Kings River, I could only access it a couple of times, so I made sure to fill up on water. The upper half of the trail was enjoyable, but also slow because it was rocky. It took longer than I expected, and I didn’t arrive to the JMT junction until almost 7pm. I quickly setup camp in the waning daylight, and after dinner, I realized that my 22 mile day was actually 24 miles, because of several guidebook errors. That explains why it felt quite a bit harder! Tomorrow should be easier, it’s all on the well-graded John Muir Trail (JMT).