Hiking Mineral King – White Chief Part 2

White Chief might be the most beautiful place accessible by foot from Mineral King. Short hike, steep, lots of variety. Any time Trail Guy encounters someone along the trail below the Eagle Lake/White Chief junction, he tells them they will be happier if they choose White Chief. 

Here are more photos from our Eclipse Day White Chief walk/hike.

What is this flowering shrub??
What is this teensy darker version of a Baby-Blue-Eyes??
What is this unknown yellow flower??
Slow but handy way to fill a water bottle.

There are more photos, but they were on Trail Guy’s camera because I overworked my battery. Aiming at the sun may not have been such a good idea. . . 

More tomorrow? Stay tuned. . .

Hiking Mineral King – White Chief

The eclipse. Big deal. Lots of chatter. Lots of ideas. Lots of rah-rah. What to do about it in Mineral King?

Easy! Poke a hole in a piece of cardboard with an ice pick, get a piece of white paper, and walk to White Chief. 

I say “walk” because I elected to not carry a pack or food. My camera was in my pocket, and a water bottle was in my hand. Let’s go!

Neither Trail Guy nor I had ever used a device like this. We both decided that if a “pinhole” (ice pick sized) is good, then why not a larger hole?
The answer is that the small hole works; the larger ones do not. We have a theory on why this is, but it will take too long to type.
I couldn’t tell the difference between light from an eclipsed sun and light when high clouds are obscuring the sunshine.
See the light in the ice-pick-sized hole? The moon kept eclipsing the sun for awhile, although I was hard-pressed to tell without the device.
Trail Guy insisted that the light was different from just a cloudy day. He’s observant and artistic like that; me? I just bumble along.

Since the steepest part of the hike was behind us, we decided to just keep on trucking up the trail into White Chief. The day became very crystal clear.

When this thick cloud passed over the sun, I aimed my camera at it. Does this look like an eclipse?

To be continued. . . tune in tomorrow.

Cabin Life

In case you were thinking that life at the cabin consisted only of hiking, here is a peek into what else occupies time while in Mineral King. I also read a great deal, but didn’t photograph my books. I figure you know what books look like. Most recently I finished Round Ireland with a Fridge and Stranger in the Woods.

Baking in a wood stove is a project. Making English muffins can be done on a griddle . . . who knew??
Sometimes we just walk among neighboring cabins. . . snooping, checking out new maintenance, looking for flowers in bloom. . .
I’ve always loved the light on the chimney of this little cabin. It is the oldest one in Mineral King.
This pair of cabins belongs to some people in Hawaii. They don’t come often; instead they let other people use their place. Sometimes those other people have loud parties, but this year has been much better, i.e. quiet.
Explorer’s Gentian – my favorite wildflower
And more Explorer’s Gentian – why does it bloom on this side of the creek and not by our place??
I love to split firewood. Trail Guy gets it into girl-sized chunks, and I whale at it with my girl-axe. It isn’t often in our current times that there are opportunities to just pound on things. It is very satisfying – I’d recommend it.
This yarn is the color of Explorer’s Gentian. Cabin time means knitting time.

New Mineral King Old Paintings

Because 6 Mineral King oil paintings sold at the Silver City Mountain Resort (AKA Silver City Store), I painted 4 new ones.

Seems like bad math or poor production to you? Labor Day is a mere 2 weeks away, and this means the season is almost finished. Part of the business of art is making tough decisions like this. That’s why I earn the Big Bucks have the freedom to spend lengths of time in Mineral King.

I could have painted more to have on hand, but I can paint more when it isn’t so hot in the painting workshop/studio. 

The 2 matching paintings in different sizes were begun before summer started. They’ve been waiting their turn. I’d rather be walking on that trail than painting it.

These are the 2 most popular Mineral King subjects that I paint and sell through Silver City. The 3rd is Sawtooth, by quite a distance. The top is the Honeymoon Cabin, which serves as a little museum for the Mineral King Preservation Society The bottom one is a private family cabin with Farewell Gap in the distance, as seen from the bridge at the end of the road.

These need another layer and some wildflowers.

Alrighty then!! The top painting is 6×6″ ($60 + tax unless you live in another state) and the bottom is 8×8″ ($100 – ditto on the taxes). When they are dry enough, they’ll be for sale at Silver City.

 

Hiking Mineral King – Eagle Lake, part 2

The rock section of the Eagle Lake Trail is very challenging if you were just expecting a little walk in the woods. Sometimes you have to wiggle your feet between some boulders, sometimes you have to just guess where the trail might be, sometimes you walk on a slab of granite, and none of it is very easy.

There are rewards: this is “Heather”.

After the rocks, there is another section that I forgot about. It isn’t too hard, but you have to watch your step because of all the roots. Trail Guy said there needs to be more “trail checks”, which are things that catch rocks and dirt when water is flowing down the trail; otherwise, all the fill dirt washes down the trail, exposing the roots of the trees (none of which show in this photo- you’ll have to trust me on this.)

Eagle Lake is one of 4 lakes dammed by the Mt. Whitney Power Company so they could control the water flow for producing electricity. Trail Guy is heading out over the dam; doesn’t it look like a lovely inviting path?

Welcome to Eagle Lake. Wish I’d brought some M&Ms. We earned them.

Trouble is, now we have to retrace our steps.

I think of the Eagle Lake Trail as “roots and shoots”, because there are zillions of roots to trip over, and all those rocks required lots of shooting with explosives to make the trail. The evidence is in those star-ish shaped dealies on the rocks.

“Ridiculous!”, said Trail Guy, about the condition of the trail.

The vertical meadow below the sinkhole and above the trail junction to White Chief was still full of a variety of wildflowers.So interesting that Eagle Lake is the most popular Mineral King hike destination, and it is probably the very worst trail. Our conclusion is that people like the name, have no idea what they are getting into (it’s only 2.4 miles one way – how bad could that be?? Try 2+ hours to walk it and then decide for yourself!), and most people want to go to lakes.

Trail Guy’s Favorite Mineral King Hike

Sometimes I have to be down the hill, feeding Samson, watering the yard, blogging, drawing, taking care of business, fulfilling promises. Meanwhile, Trail Guy the Retiree is in Mineral King, hiking and taking photos for me to put on my blog.

His favorite place to go is White Chief. Mine too, unless it is the junction of the Franklin/Farewell Gap trails, or Farewell Gap itself. The lakes might could be, but we don’t go there much so I can’t remember. (I might could go there, but I’ll prolly be down the hill at the liberry instead.)

And sometimes Trail Guy comes home, especially if the Giants are on teevee.

Not the Giants; Samson wants to know why the Giants’ games are blocked out in our zip code.

Drawing in Mineral King

Back in the olden days when I could see without cheater magnifier glasses or a giant magnifying light, I used to draw at the cabin. I even had a drafting table upstairs underneath a north-west facing window for light.

It has been quite a few years since that was an adequate arrangement. I sold the table and stopped trying to work without electricity.

However, last week I wanted to get some work done and be out of the triple-digit heat. Since a 2018 calendar printing deadline is looming, I decided to give drawing at the cabin another try. The calendar will be all about water in Tulare County, and water doesn’t require a T-square or precise measurements, the way architectural subjects do.

It has been so long since I drew up the hill that my favorite brand of pencils has changed from Turquoise to Mars Staedtler. I had no Mars, so I used a Palomino Blackwing. 

Grandpa’s magnifying glass helped. I took the drawing home, and perfected things under the giant magnifying light before scanning and doing the Photoshop prep for the 2018 calendar.

 

This was definitely a successful experiment, so we celebrated with a BBQ’d pizza for dinner. No way was I cooking that in the woodstove – it would get as hot in the kitchen as it is down the hill!

Curious about Palomino Blackwing pencils? I got them through Amazon, of course.

 

Hiking Mineral King – Farewell Gap

Two days after Trail Guy went to Farewell Gap via a loop, we returned together with our new best hiking buddy Jessica. The point of the hike was to see Sky Pilot, an elusive high-elevation flower that we’ve never seen anywhere except Farewell Gap (not that we go anywhere outside of Mineral King. . .)

Here are my photos of that trip.

The flowers are still great at the “Junction Cafe”. This time we didn’t stop here for lunch but just kept heading up and up and up.

A previously-ignored or never-before-noticed, not-in-the-books yellow wildflower
This reminded us of marigolds, and if I can’t find it in any book, I will simply title it myself: Mountain Marigold.
I think this is the same thing, looking down from the top. Most of them had 3 sections of petals.
Stonecrop? Nope, that’s yellow. This is an unknown high-altitude succulent.
More unknown high-altitude succulents.
Blue Lips are still in bloom up high. This is late for them!
Identify yourself, Unknown Shrub!

The lupine up on Farewell Gap have white accents, and the penstemon is a color I’ve never seen it in before.
Sky Pilot – THIS is why we hiked 6.7 miles one way, uphill.
I was thinking of this hat as a Lupine-head, but Jessica wore it in honor of the Sky Pilot.

I felt sort of tired, and thought, “How disappointing, I’m out of shape”. It later occurred to me that middle-aged people who are truly out of shape don’t hike 13+ miles in one day at high altitudes (or low ones either).

Sorry, Trail Guy – no one will come by to give you a lift back down to the cabin.
Jess and me with the Golden Trout Wilderness/Forest Service land behind us.
Jessica and me with Timber Gap in the background.
Franklin Creek continues to flow strongly, but it is easy to ford now.