Sort of Doing Nothing in Mineral King

Since I saw moving purple spots last time I tried to hike, the next time I went up the hill, I stayed closer to the cabin. Perhaps it was just an excuse to be lazy; on the other hand, maybe I was using my noggin.

I left home around 8:30. It now takes me almost 2 hours to get the approximately 26 miles to the cabin, so an early-ish start is beneficial to having a not-too-hot drive and getting there with enough time to have a full day. It’s been awhile since I photographed my favorite bridge, 6.5 miles up the road.

It wasn’t an entirely do-nothing stay. Our wood stove supply was getting low; Trail Guy tossed a bunch of chunks toward my chopping block and said, “There! That ought to keep you busy for awhile.” I said, “Half an hour, tops”. Good guess. Prolly took just as long to stack it.

We walked to Crystal Creek, and then a little farther. (No moving purple spots—thank you for your concern.)

First, a stop at the pack station. Trail Guy likes to make sure the water troughs are full.

The old pack station building is a disaster. If anyone points this out to The Park, I guarantee that the answer will be “We are short staffed”. My inclination is to say, “Get off your duff and off your screen and get your patoot out into your areas of responsibility and for Pete’s Sake, DO SOMETHING!” I wisely am keeping my yap shut.

Next stop: the creek where the packers used to cross with their strings of mules. Yeppers, the water is low. It’s August.

Onward.

I still marvel that Crystal Creek has held to its new course after 2023.

I opted out on the off trail stuff because of the the meat bees, which make nests in the ground.

Instead, I inspected a few things, experimented with the iPhone as a camera, trying to understand how to get it to focus.

Fungus
Lichen
Aster
Yarrow
sulphur flower (dying)

These are cottonwood trees; the iPhone called them “poplars”. Maybe they are in the same family.

Back to the cabin, and no, this is not our cabin. I don’t show our cabin, because this is the World Wide Web, and we are already inundated with visitors, all friends, but inundation is inundation. (You may quote this piece of brilliance).

It was a short stay. I missed Tucker, and he missed me.

Mineral King Cabin Life

This could be cabin life anywhere, especially if your cabin is part of a community of cabins.

We often take walks to the bridge in the evening to enjoy the views, the light and one another’s company. My guess is that many cabin communities have gathering places and times in their own areas.

Sometimes we hike with neighbors and friends. Hiking is a main focus of Mineral King; not all cabin communities that I’ve visited have the kind of trails we have. Probably nowhere else has trails like Mineral King!

We talk to people who are wondering about trails, pointing out good places to go. The Park employees are often new and don’t have the depth of knowledge of the area that the locals do.

On Independence Day, we raised a flag together (and I read part of the Declaration of Independence to my hiking friends while at the Wildflower Cafe.) Flying a flag is a tradition when one’s cabin is occupied. There are a couple of cabins that don’t bother, and there are a couple that fly a California flag rather than the Stars and Stripes. (WHY??)

We share dinners, happy hours, extra bacon, kindling, marmot wisdom, and knitting knowledge. (There’s more, but I probably already have over-shared.)

Here is the classic view from the bridge of the Crowley Family cabin and Farewell Gap.

Cleaning up the Jackpots

Cabin Life

Behind and around our cabin is what firefighters call a “jackpot”. This is a conglomerate, a tangle, a giant mess of downed trees and limbs. Let’s not think too hard about their nomenclature.

I’ve been raking, dragging, cutting and organizing this in incremental sessions throughout the past 2 years. It is gradually decreasing, gradually getting cleaned up. Of course Trail Guy also works on this, approaching it a bit differently than me.

A handsaw rather than a chainsaw gives me a lot of upper-body exercise and makes some firewood to share with neighbors. My pace is laughable to Trail Guy, but I consider myself to be a rather productive tortoise.

Then I thought about swinging an axe to bust through a pretty stout limb, something I have only done once before in my life (a Three Rivers neighbor’s tree blew down in a storm, blocking her driveway, and no one with a chainsaw was available so I bravely marched down to her house in the rain with my trusty axe and got it into pieces that we could drag away.)

This piece required a lot of whaling, slamming, swinging, and wondering if I would be able to git-‘er-dun. When I got it this far, I asked Trail Guy for some input, guessing he’d bust through in 10 swings. He swung 15 times (yes, I counted), handed the axe back and told me to use a sharper one instead.

So I swapped axes, and went after it again, this time busting through with a shout of victory. The sharper axe was more effective.

I’ve asked Trail Guy to teach me how to sharpen an axe this summer, (mis)quoting Abraham Lincoln about spending an hour sharpening an axe and an hour chopping wood instead of spending 2 hours chopping wood.

Thus we conclude another look at my quirky cabin life. Perhaps next time I will be able to persuade Trail Guy to fire up his chainsaw, but most likely he will be working on neighbors’ stoves/water heaters/toilets/faucets/refrigerators. There has been way too much of that so far this summer. I helped with a water heater, and took photos and measured for a stove and another water heater to be replaced… I’m good for more than just some axe-swingin’.

Who Moved Franklin Falls? (in Mineral King)

Walking in Mineral King (Not a hike because we didn’t take packs)

Instead of the now normal down-the-road-and-up-the-Nature-Trail walk, or the wussy turning around at Crystal Creek, we went past Crystal to Franklin Creek.

It was a little bit farther this year. Don’t you just hate that?

Looking back
Looking ahead

The flowers were most totally excellent.

This was interesting to your wildflower obsessed Central Calif. artist: a purple bush lupine adjacent* to a seldom-seen pink bush lupine.

This is angelica, not to be confused with cow parsnip. Angelica has lacy leaves, sort of visible at the bottom of this photo.

Here is Franklin Creek/Franklin Falls. This is the stream that rose too high for my hiking pal K and I to cross last year in August. You can read about it here: An Exciting Mineral King Hike

Crossing Crystal Creek is way more my speed than dealing with the deeper, steeper, and faster Franklin Creek.

Oh man! I forgot again to put that dime in my pocket for understanding sizes of little flowers!

The Indian paintbrush were spectacular, particularly interspersed with the grayish green sage.

An Advertisement Because This is Supposed to be a Business Blog

This painting is sold, but I can paint it again for you.

*”Adjacent” is “everyone’s” new favorite word. Podcasters and bloggers love to attach it to other words, like this: “This blog about art is Mineral King adjacent”.

Mineral King: Weekend of Uncertainty

I am now down the hill from a long weekend in Mineral King and since a great number of my blog readers want Mineral King information, I will tell you about it this week.

The road is now closed. We were not evacuated, but were escorted out this morning. Everyone wanting to leave had to meet at the Conifer Gate at 10 a.m. Those who didn’t leave are “sheltering in place” for 48-72 hours. We were under an Evacuation Warning.

Saturday evening a pair of men from the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office came around, warning us of impending road closure and tacking notices on the doors of all the cabins (whether or not they were occupied or had been closed for the season).

What to do? Begin packing up? Nope. Take a walk and enjoy what time remained.

Nope, we were NOT recreating, an activity that was forbidden when we were admitted entrance for the purpose of closing our cabins.

We spent Sunday in uncertainty—close for the season? Simply drain and anticipate a return? Take down as much as possible? Leave things up in case of a return later this fall?

Fortunately, we did a lot of paring down of our belongings, packing, and loading the pickups. (The Botmobile is a bit smallish, so we rely heavily on the generosity of The Farmer with his Massive Pick-em-up Truck, HUGE!)

“Fortunately”?

Yeppers. A Park official showed up around 8 on Monday morning to tell us to be at the Conifer Gate by 10 a.m. We got a move on, and made it.

We stopped at the Silver City Store so I could rescue my unsold paintings and cards, and headed down to Conifer.

Tomorrow I’ll show and tell you more about the Weekend of Uncertainty.

Noticing, Neglected, and New: New

New

Although Sequoia National Park in Mineral King appears to be understaffed, with many things in a neglected state, things that are under the purview of private individuals are getting spiffed up. Cabin life is often about maintenance, and it is excellent to see this taking place.

This was rebuilt and is waiting for more siding.
A new roof!
New paint on the trim!
New steps!
New paint on the cabin!
Newly painted!

Finally, the Honeymoon Cabin has been painted!

Yes, many exclamation marks are in this post, because it is very heartening to see maintenance and care given to a cabin community’s tangible assets.

Another Mineral King Report

It was a smoky several days in Mineral King.

I stopped by a friend’s cabin for a quick visit and was struck by this timeless cabin scene.

The smoke did not prevent or hamper the 39th annual Mineral King Preservation Society’s Picnic in the Park, featuring our own Trail Guy.

He told of his three winters spent in Mineral King in the early 1980s, a story that held people’s attention for an entire hour.

Even little ones didn’t get restless, which is mighty amazing in this age of devices.

This one had a companion with her, besides me, her current MK BFF.

These are some of the very few artifacts remaining from the end of Trail Guy’s third winter (although the photos weren’t in the cabin when it went the way of all flesh.)

When the ordeal of public speaking was behind Trail Guy, we gathered with our neighbors in the evening.

The next day we went for a walk with some of our neighbors, in spite of the smoke.

Trail Guy loves to show people his favorite flower, the tiger lily (more accurately known as a leopard lily because it has spots, not stripes, but we have discussed this previously. . .) How thoughtful of those ranger buttons to disguise the face of his hiking friend.

The flowers were excellent, something I was almost resigned to missing in this hikeless summer. But some of the wildflowers are accessible even if one is only in walking mode.

Glacial daisy

This is Soda Springs, where water bubbles out of the ground with a hint of carbonation. Some people like to mix it with powdered lemonade, but I’ve never thought that was better than plain water. The water bubbling up tastes metallic. Some of these places are called “iron springs”, some “soda springs”, although I’ve never learned the difference, if there is such a difference.

The air cleared out in the evening when the winds shifted direction.

Thus we conclude another report on a series of days spent in Mineral King. Thanks for tuning in!

Community Life in Mineral King

Mineral King is a place for backpackers, campers, day hikers, day trippers, and cabin folks. Today’s post is about the cabin community. (Last summer I posted regularly about cabin life.)

There are cabin communities all over the mountains in this country, and most likely in other countries too. I’ve written in the past (2018?) about what makes them special: Cabin Thoughts, One; Cabin Thoughts, Two; Cabin Thoughts, Three, A Few More Cabin Thoughts, and Final Final Cabin Thoughts.

Today’s post is what happens on a busy weekend in our cabin community of Mineral King. There are several parts to the community: our immediate neighbors, those across the creek, the settlement one mile down the road (formerly known as “Faculty Flat”, now “West Mineral King” is the preferred name, and no, I didn’t ask for pronouns); Silver City (private property 4 miles down the road); and Cabin Cove (7 cabins about 5 miles down the road from us).

This is what happens on any given weekend—the closer to the end of summer, the more activities. We:

  1. gather at someone’s cabin for “happy hour”, eat fun things, catch up with one another, and then are too full for dinner
  2. eat dinner together
  3. (Trail Guy and The Farmer, not me unless The Farmer isn’t around) help with various repairs. (The cabins are OLD.)
  4. hike together (hike: carrying pack with lunch and water)
  5. walk together (no pack, no lunch)
  6. give one another rides up and down the hill
  7. bring supplies for one another when coming up the hill
  8. share books
  9. lend knitting needles
  10. let people use our telephone (when we had one) and borrow the neighbor’s phone now
  11. clean up the platform for the annual “Music in the Mountains” event
  12. prune in one another’s yards (okay, that’s just me. . .)
  13. use a hav-a-hart trap to catch bushy-tailed woodrats (definitely Trail Guy, NOT me)
  14. explore historic sites
  15. lend tools
  16. repair water line breaks
  17. go through the junk we discover in our respective cabins, sometimes trading items of interest
  18. share missing recipe ingredients

We stay in touch throughout the year, because our friendships are solid, not simply seasonal.

Cabin Life, Chapter Twenty-two (Finale)

Cabin Life: Final Thoughts

Someone’s Colorado cabin –definitely not small, rustic or rude

This is a backcountry cabin somewhere in Montana.

This rest of this post features drawings of Wilsonia cabins, where I spent 4 summers learning about that cabin community and discovering many common themes to the Mineral King community.

There are three distinct parts to cabin-ness:

  1. The building itself – small, rustic, basic, simple, often without electronic amenities. (But wait! What about the cabin pictured above?)
  2. The setting – rural, semi-secluded, in the mountains, taking an effort to get to (But wait! Have you ever been up Highway 180 to Wilsonia? And do these cabins look semi-secluded to you?)

     

A Wilsonia road

 

 

 

A Wilsonia neighborhood

The culture—slower, focused on people instead of technology; a place to play, recreate and relax, mostly outside; a place where meals and fireplaces become events in and of themselves; returning to nostalgic pastimes either of our youth or of some idealized youth of our parents and grandparents.

 

Outdoor dining is a big part of cabin life.

 

Napping is a regular method of relaxing at a cabin.

 

See? Outdoor dining area

 

Even outdoor cooking!

Fireplaces are a huge part of cabin culture.

 

Eat and run??

It seems that the culture part is the strongest determining factor of cabin life. Some of our cabin neighbors gathered in another location for several summers, due to illness of one of their group. One of them told me, “We do Mineral King things in Seattle, and Mineral King is present with us there.” (I probably paraphrased it beyond all recognition – Forgive me, Sawtooth Six!)

Thus, we conclude our 2023 series on Cabin Life. (unless I think of something else)

P.S. Most of the drawings in this post are part of the book The Cabins of Wilsonia, available here.

P.P.S. I can draw your cabin because. . .

. . . using pencils, oil paints, and murals, I make art you can understand, of places and things you love, for prices that won’t scare you.