Kings Peak Hike
If you can't tell I like to hike.
Something about hiking up a mountain is very rewarding to me.
I however am not a big fan of camping.
I love building a fire, eating the food, telling the stories, but something about not sleeping all night
is not my fav.
For Kings Peak we decided to backpack into dollar lake (something most people do)
Then hike the next day, but unlike everyone else we would hike the mountain and continue to the car.
Sounds easy enough right? How does 31 miles in two days sound? Ya, thats what I thought.
The expedition was led by Adam. Dad and I just tagged along. I have to admit I thought my dad would slow us down but he proved otherwise as he was the first one to the car when all was said and done.
Here is our trip...
Starting out at the trail head... nice and clean!
About 5 miles onto the trail you have this nice foot bridge. (If we were to do it again this is where we would have stayed) The farther you go with the backpack the farther you have to take it back.
Almost to dollar lake (about 8 miles from the trail head). We are pointing to Kings Peak.
Our base camp. The fire ban for the area was lifted and we were all very grateful to have our fire.
Beautiful sunset. Great place to be for a birthday retreat.
So you take all your backpacking stuff in. After somewhat of a nights sleep we got up had breakfast
and packed up our stuff and then brought out our day packs. Took our rain coats, water, and food and headed up the real part of the adventure.
I thought I'd spare you the grueling photos of the climb... lets just say it was very steep and very rocky. We actually took a short cut (not very well marked but well known) and supposedly it saved an 1hr.
Here we are at the summit though a whooping 13,528.
The last 1,000 feet though is super rough. I was really worried about altitude sickness but we all did very well.
Till it hailed, and hailed again, then rained all over us!
This is dad and Adam SOAKED!
A picture can't capture the feeling but lets just say it wasn't a good time to find out your gear isn't water-proof its water resistant.
We had 8 miles of walking with our heavy backpacks soaking wet and chilled.
On the way down we passed a girl in short shorts and I wanted to tell her I hope you brought pants because this is NOT a hike for shorts. From what I hear showers are very common up there.
If you decide to do this take the best gear and pack light. There are plenty of places to get water so don't pack 2 days worth of water.
We were crazy and did it in 2 days something else I don't recommend. I would recommend 3 if you want to backpack in. But to be honest backpacking isn't my favorite so if I could do it again I would camp at the trailhead then trail run the first 8 miles then hike the way to the top then back down and then trail run/crawl the last eight (doing it in one day)
I like trail running a lot better than backpacking.
Its lighter, faster, and makes me happy.
And you can ask the boys how happy I was the last eight miles.
