Are you all rested after the lunch break and ready to make like a cow-pie and hit the trail again? (Never mind. We weren’t on a trail yet.) After our lunch break among the yellow unknowns, we crossed a little spring or drainage, a wet place that I named Everything Spring. Every possible wildflower was […]
A Long Walk in Mineral King, Part 2
Today we continue our long walk, now above White Chief, heading through some of the finest flowers in memory. I’m not going to sugar-coat this hike. It was harder to get to the top of the ridge than I remember, not as hard to come down the other side, but then pretty hard to pick […]
A Long Walk in Mineral King, Part 1
Actually, it was a hike. We went to White Chief, over the ridge to the Farewell Gap drainage, down to the snow survey site, crossed the stream on a snowfield, found our way to the Farewell/Franklin Trail, and then 4 miles back to the cabin. This post is getting too long, kind of like the […]
Another Short Mineral King Walk
I have a friend with a Mineral King cabin. Although we have this in common, and that is how we met, our friendship has mostly grown through email. Recently our cabin times overlapped, and together we walked up to Crystal Creek, about a one mile walk on a fairly flat trail (that used to be […]
Short Mineral King Walk
There is a trail in Mineral King called “The Nature Trail”, a one mile route that connects Cold Springs Campground (near the Ranger Station) to the Mineral King valley itself. There was a meeting in the area near Cold Springs Campground, and I took the Zapato Express*, choosing to go down the trail instead of […]
Old Drawing, New Cards
In 1992, I did this commissioned pencil drawing of a Mineral King cabin. The one who owns it sent me a photo of the card she had left from an earlier order. I tried to turn it into something that would print as a decent card. This was not acceptable. The customer said she still […]
Mineral King Wildflowers
Due to a late winter, increased family responsibilities, time at Hume Lake, and a Shaver Lake reunion, my visits to Mineral King have been fewer this summer than in previous years. Have a look at a recent visit, a non-hiking sort of look. It is a remarkable year for water and for flowers. This area […]
A Walk to Eagle Meadow
I split a lot of firewood, and have learned how to read the wood to work with the knots. Knots are just branches, but I have never seen inside a hollow tree before to see the entire branch, or what the end of a knot looks like. There weren’t as many flowers as we expected […]
Trail Guy’s Mineral King Photos
This has been a summer of reunions at mountain lakes in the Sierra for me. When I am somewhere else, I am not in Mineral King. (Thank you, Captain Obvious.) I know that many of my blog readers only care about Mineral King, so today’s post will be photos by Trail Guy, taken while I […]
Mineral King, Plein Air #4
I liked sitting by the stream to paint, so I set up the next day in the morning so it would be shady. The idea was to paint the same scene with different lighting, but I ended up leaving out the juniper this time. Why? Because I wanted to, and I am the boss of […]