Day 55: Kennedy meadows campground - 3 miles south of Gomez meadow (mi 704.5-727)

Off into the Sierra Nevada!

The Wolfpack taking a break and tanking up on water before the first climb of the day. 

Smiles moving swiftly with a fully-loaded pack up the first climb, admittedly through another burn area. 

Starfox, Rocky and T-Rex climb up through the burn. 

No naked hippies were observed after seeing this sign, though our eyes were peeled. 

Sour Cream puts his hand up next to some bear sign.

Everyone paused to take photos at the first meadow. 

The group all together in the South Fork Kern River drainage

Smiles working downhill to the lunch break. 

Jamming uphill on the second climb after lunch. Our last time at 7,000 feet for some time. 

Top of the climb! A beautiful, hanging meadow overlooking the Kern River drainage. 

Smiles continues walking towards camp in the softening evening light. 

Finally in the sierras! Potentially out of the cacti. After a fitful night of sleep brought on by too much caffeine, and the immensity of the sections at hand, we awoke to pull off a very hard section at a hard pace. We were going to break off from the wolfpack, again sadly, to hike to the base of Mt. Whitney in 3 days, 66 miles north with a good stretch of climbing to high elevations. Most hikers average 10-15 mpd in this stretch, making it a 4-5 day endeavor. We were not able to do so, much as we wished to with the wolfpack due to the wedding in mammoth, 204 miles north, in 12 days. We needed to do 22 mpd to reach Whitney, then average 17 mpd after submitting Whitney while climbing the mountain passes of the high Sierras. On top of this, we knew beforehand we weren't going to have the time to resupply in independence, bishop or lone pine, so we were laden with 12 days of food in our bear cans, which generated the heaviest packs of the trip. Mine weighed in at 47 lbs with half a liter of water and 4 beers when I left Kennedy meadows proper yesterday. 

After breaking the change of plans to our friends, all of us hiked on up the south fork kern river into the Sequoia NF South Sierra Wilderness. The forest still showed signs of the xeric climate, as cacti sporadically poked through the sand outcroppings in the generally more cohesive soil. We climbed away from the river around 6200 ' and started climbing up a dry tributary through a burn area. Even the burned areas were more beautiful, quipped T-Rex and Smiles independently. A solid climb up to 8000 feet or so put us back into the S Fork Kern proper's drainage in its wide, scalloped network of sage- and meadow-lined valleys. Actual grass that grew without being watered. We admired a bear-marked tree with sap-bleeding gouges along its side from the powerful ursine claws. We had a wonderful lunch at the river crossing with the wolfpack and approximately 12 other hikers. I did a little gopro time lapse setup, and observed a timid Sierra garter snake (thamnophis couchi) sunning itself on the sandbar. Directly from lunch, we started climbing from 7800 to nearly 11000 over the next 8 miles, steadily transitioning through all the zones between riverine scrub and alpine meadows. We sidled into camp just before sundown, and were treated to an ethereally backlit sunset behind the clouds and mountains across a wide glacial valley. Our bear hang successful, we split on a MRE snagged from a hiker box, rolled the bear cans to a safe spot, and hit the hay invigorated that the mountains were upon us and we were going to be able to achieve our goals.