Morning at Lake 9830. Our plan for the day was to hike to Columbine Lake and then see what time it was and what the weather looked like. If everything was favourable, we could climb Sawtooth Peak and continue down to Monarch Lakes, otherwise we’d have to figure out a place to camp near Columbine Lake. This was complicated a bit by the camping restriction at this lake – you can’t camp within a quarter mile of the lake or something like that, but we figured we could make something work by descending in one direction or another.

One more up close and personal view of the Kaweahs before heading back west.

Black Kaweah through the trees.

We stopped and refilled water in Lost Canyon Creek, enjoying the shade and cooler morning air.

After a winding and occasionally rocky climb, we reached the head of Lost Canyon. Columbine Lake is just above the rocks at the head of the canyon, and Sawtooth Peak is the pointy mountain on the left.

Looking back down Lost Canyon. We passed an older hiker climbing towards Columbine, but otherwise there weren’t too many folks out in this area.

Columbine Lake was an impressive sight. It sits in a rocky basin with high mountains rising on three sides. The weather was looking reasonable and it was still before noon, so we continued on for Sawtooth Pass.

Near Columbine Lake I found this hummingbird. The poor thing had a hurt wing and couldn’t fly. I couldn’t do anything to help it, so I moved it over to a slightly more sheltered spot, hoping its wing would feel better before it was noticed by another less friendly animal.

Sawtooth Peak above Columbine Lake.

Sawtooth Peak from Sawtooth Pass. At the pass, we had a lunch break and then unloaded most of the stuff from our packs and hid it behind a rock. We set off along the north ridge of Sawtooth Peak with lighter backpacks. It wasn’t that easy of a traverse, we had to drop down now and then to avoid tougher sections along the ridgeline. It took about an hour to reach the tricky climbing up to the summit blocks, which we had to wrap around and climb from the south.

Mount Whitney and the surrounding peaks from the summit of Sawtooth Peak.

Columbine Lake and the Kaweahs.

Looking south towards Lake 10992 and Florence Peak (in the shaded area). After a short rest, we headed back down. We had even more trouble sticking to the ridgeline on the way down and veered about 100 feet below it a couple of times before climbing back up near the pass.

When we got back to our things we found that a marmot had chewed on one of the garbage bags we had used for waterproofing. The marmot hadn’t liked the taste, apparently, and had moved on to somewhere else.

The weather was building up above us, so we packed up and set out down the very sandy Sawtooth Pass. There is a trail marked on the map here, but we found a network of use trails descending down the sand and plunge-stepped down to Monarch Lakes. I thought this seemed like it’d be a miserable way to climb up, it was just so sandy!

As we descended, a thunderstorm broke out over Mineral King. It rained and hailed a bit on us, but not too violently. It only took us about 30 minutes to get from the pass down to Monarch Lake where we found a good campsite west of the lower lake. This was a popular spot, there were probably about 10 other groups camped here including a pair of tents pitched in a meadow less than 10 feet from the lake’s east shore. These nice destinations that are pretty close to trailheads tend to attract this kind of behavior.

Sunset behind a Foxtail Pine.

Looking down towards Mineral King.

Last light of the day.

I didn’t fall asleep straight away at night and got up around 10 to take a few more photos of the stars. It was still very warm, so I had some time to make sure everything looked good before going back to bed.