Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/16131114074

It was quite cold the next morning, so we got up around 7, made breakfast, and headed out around 8. The first few miles towards Mount Kaweah follow the High Sierra Trail and are pretty easy.

We left the trail near where the prominent rib northwest of the peak comes down, climbing through rocks and open forest for a while before gaining the rib proper. We continued up and up, coming across (and terrifying) a Sierra Jackrabbit about 12,000 above sea level, as the views to our west and north opened up.

Lippincott Mountain to the west.

The southern portion of the Great Western Divide, including Sawtooth Peak, to the southwest.

Before long we neared the top of the rib and crossed talus towards the final summit slope of Mount Kaweah, our goal within reach!

Shannon climbing the final steep bit towards Mount Kaweah’s summit ridge.

The Great Western Divide from near the summit of Mount Kaweah.

Almost there… Looking back to the northwest again.

We reached the summit just after noon and had a big hug to celebrate our accomplishment. Sure, we’d like to climb all of the SPS peaks, but even doing just the Emblem Peaks is really impressive! These fifteen peaks are all pretty impressive mountains, and we were thrilled to have successfully summited ALL of them! It helped that the view from the summit of Mount Kaweah was awesome.

Looking north towards the Kings-Kern Divide.

Mount Ritter and Banner Peak far to the north, with Mount Goddard at right.

Mount Whitney and friends to the east.

The unnamed lake just north of Mount Kaweah with the Kings-Kern Divide in the distance.

While we had much cause for celebration, we also had some cause for concern atop the summit. I pulled fresh weather forecasts from the National Weather Service and saw that the incoming storm had shifted forward a little bit and was now forecasted to arrive in Mineral King around noon on Monday, instead of on Monday evening, and it was supposed to drop 2-3 feet of snow on the high peaks in the area. With our exit involving two cross-country passes, or close to 20 miles of on-trail walking, this meant we would have to hurry a bit more than we previously thought. We figured we’d talk about it once we got back to camp because we had to get there anyways tonight.

We made pretty quick work of the descent. This climb isn’t difficult by any means, just a sand/talus climb (though a pretty long one), without much loose rock, or any other real difficulty to report.

A dried up creekbed on the descent.

On our way down, we trended a bit farther north, following a creek back to the High Sierra Trail.

Back on the High Sierra Trail.

We reached camp at about 3PM, which meant we still had a few hours of daylight to make out way back towards Mineral King. We packed up and reached the conclusion that we should basically just get as far as we could get tonight, with a bit of headlamp time. Ideally, we hoped, we’d cross Black Rock Pass, putting us just one pass and a few thousand vertical feet from the trailhead. If we made it over Black Rock Pass but the storm came in sooner or harder than expected, we figured we could also follow the trail north and then back south before crossing Timber Gap, which is almost 2,000’ lower than Glacier Pass and has a trail over it. With these A and B plans in place, we had one goal for the evening: reach the Kaweah River drainage.

Heading out of the Big Arroyo.

Beautiful Foxtail Pines in afternoon light near Little Five Lakes.

Crossing the outlet of one of the Little Five Lakes.

A parting shot across one of the Little Five Lakes.

I felt kind of bad for a little bit passing Little Five Lakes. We had put back a pretty solid day already and still hoped to cross the pass ahead, but with only an hour or so of daylight remaining. We had a little snack and continued on.

Alpenglow on the peaks to the south from Black Rock Pass. It was freezing at the pass, but fortunately there wasn’t too much wind. The views were beautiful though.

Sunset light behind Sawtooth Peak. We donned our headlamps atop the pass, but didn’t need them until we were a few hundred feet down the pass's west side. The trail over this pass is in very good shape, so it was not a big deal to hike it by headlamp.

Lower down, I did my best to identify a good spot to leave the trail and we dealt with one hundred or so vertical feet of difficult travel before reaching the flatter part of the valley below. There were many more rocks in the valley bed than I remembered from the day before, though, which made finding a campsite hard. We had thought we might be able to get to Spring Lake, but fortunately we found a decent campsite near Cliff Creek where we quickly set up camp, cooked dinner, and tucked in to bed. The temperature was already well below freezing, but we knew this was probably our last night under the stars of the season, so we didn’t mind too much.