This trip report covers a six-day backpacking trip in the headwater basins of the Kings and Kern rivers of Sequoia / Kings Canyon National Parks from September 7-13, 2018. As before, I’ll focus on providing good photographs and supplementing with commentary when necessary.

This trip fell towards the end of fun summer season. Shannon took the Bar Exam in July, and I was on a three month sabbatical from work. We spent basically all of August hiking, having completed the JMT, a quick trip in the Mammoth area, and the Wind River High Route in addition to some other travel. We were in very good shape, but not exactly sure what we wanted out of this trip.

After some discussion on the topic, we settled on some reasonable objectives, but with an eye on flexibility. We planned to focus on the Kings-Kern Divide country, hoping to visit Rae Lakes, Lake Reflection, and summit Mount Tyndall. We also scoped out optional side-trips to summit Mount Rixford, Mount Gould, Mount Cotter, Fin Dome, something along the Kings-Kern Divide (possibly Mount Stanford), and Mount Williamson. We had no intention of trying for all of these, but wanted to keep a list in mind.

Our rough day-by-day plan was to hike from Onion Valley to Kearsarge Lakes on day one, move to Rae Lakes the next day, spend a day there exploring the basins, continue on to Lake Reflection on day four, cross the King’s-Kern Divide and continue on to Shepherd Pass on day five, climb Mount Tyndall and Williamson on day six, and then drop to the JMT and head out via Forester and Kearsarge passes on day seven. It seemed like a reasonable plan, but as is often the case, it didn’t work out quite this way.

Looking north from Duck Pass. On the 6th, we picked up our permit in Mammoth, a walk-up permit for Kearsarge Pass. We enjoyed a quick day hike up to Duck Pass before driving south.

The view north, with the Silver Divide just poking out to the right of the second picture.

Mount Williamson in the afternoon light looming high above Onion Valley Road.

We got one of the last couple of campsites at Onion Valley and spent the afternoon and early evening getting sorted out for the hike.