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.
FungusLichenAsterYarrowsulphur 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.
On my last trip up the hill, my back hurt. I don’t know why. It just does sometimes, and after a week, it subsides. I never know if it is good for it to get taken for a walk or if I should just lie on the floor on ice.
I decided to ignore the thing and go hiking after taking an aspirin. With my friend K and Trail Guy, we headed up toward Eagle Meadow. I was anticipating some great flowers.
It was kind of hot, and steeper than it used to be. Each time I stopped, I got light-headed. Is this because I am 66? Fat? Pre-diabetic? Neuropathy in my feet? Whatever, I didn’t like it.
Trail Guy went on ahead while K and I stood there waiting for the blood to return to my head. I realized that I was seeing spots. They looked like purple flowers, but they were blurry and kept moving. Oh-oh.
I told K that I was going to listen to my body and head back to the cabin once the spots subsided. She said she’d come with me because she didn’t want to find me lying on the trail later. I said, “Don’t worry—someone else will get there first. Besides, you need to let Trail Guy know that I’m going back.”
She agreed, and we parted ways. I took a handful of crummy photos for you.
That’s Crystal Creek running down in an almost invisible ribbon across the canyon.
You can see Empire in the distance, and I think there were a few purple flowers in the foreground. Hmmm, maybe I was hallucinating.
SEE?? There WERE some purple flowers. So there.
These folks passed me. An umbrella on the trail? Yeppers. That’s the second one I’ve encountered this year.
Mr. Umbrella was a very interesting man. I caught up to them and we walked the last mile down together. He is a caver (probably not the correct title), someone who protects caves around the state (maybe even the country—I didn’t ask), gives tours, and does much more, including cave rescues. I learned that if a person wants to explore a cave, he should look up his “local grotto” (I don’t know if that is an organization called “Local Grotto” or if it is called “Grotto”) and find the local branch. Each cave has trustees, and a trustee will help you explore the cave, assuming you have the proper climbing gear and experience.
I was fine when I got home, and by the time you are reading this, my back is probably also fine. I don’t understand the extreme low blood pressure, or the spots, or why the trail is steeper this year.
Can someone please stop the clock and the calendar for me?
Here, let’s have a few not crummy photos from the next day when I walked down the road.
Then I saw this car. Not a Honda, but Toyota is fine too. Our two pick-‘em-up trucks are Toyotas. The car has no model on it. Look at the color! I peeked in the window and it is a stick shift. I almost put a card under the windshield saying “Please call me if you want to sell this car”. Of course I want to know the model, the year, the mileage, but oh my, it looked like my dream car, a younger Fernando in Toyota instead of Honda.
Momscar is a fine piece of transportation, but I NEED this car!
Oh grow up, Central California Artist, you are 66, not 16.
The Mineral King Road is a doozy. 26 miles (I think, but maybe it is 25), much of it a cliff-hanger, no fog lines, rails, center stripes, and in some places, no shoulder.
The lower 10 miles is under county jurisdiction, the upper part under the feds (national park). About 13 miles of the upper part is under construction and has been for a couple of summers (and one winter) now.
The temporary bridge has been in place since 2023. Sometimes I wonder how truly temporary it is—will it still be in place when I want to come back down the road??
This is what a temporary bridge looks like. The boards are weathered, and they bounce when you drive over them.
This bridge might also be temporary; it is supposed to remain in place as a pedestrian bridge while a stouter, sturdier one gets build upstream. I think this is a joint project between the county and the feds, but who knows? And who knows when it will begin or get completed? Rumor has it that the project will begin this fall, but I’ll believe it when I see it. The sign calls it the Kaweah River Bridge, but since there are 5 forks to the Kaweah River, locals call it the Oak Grove Bridge. Technically, it is the East Fork, but people don’t need to know directions any more because they have a talking lady in their phones to tell them where to go.
This is what most of the county part of the road surface is like. They have done a little bit of patching this spring, but it is probably a losing battle because of all the heavy trucks and construction equipment.
The Potholes, not to be confused with the potholes in the road, are still running strong for early August. Our theory is that the fires (2020, 2021, 2024 all run together as bad fire years so I don’t remember which one burned which areas) destroyed many of the trees above that used to suck up the water.
Yippee skippee, road work ahead for 13 miles.
This sign about ending the county maintained road used to get graffitied regularly, with the prefix “un” added to the word “maintained”. Now we feel a little bit sorry for the county road workers, and they did actually do some patching this summer.
Notice the suddenly smooth road surface.
Don’t get used to it; it only lasts about 6 miles. Look how it made the water trough at Trauger’s look short.
The paving gets all patchy —washboard to loosen your fillings or perhaps cause the stereo to fall out of your car or your CD to skip (shut up, some of us still have stereos that play CDs, so there), gravel, and occasional new asphalt, all the way to High Bridge, where the Really Outrageously Terrible road surface begins. Nope, I didn’t dare stop for photos.
Some of my long distance blog readers may be wondering why we drive this road every week in the summer. Here is your answer.
Any more questions?
P.S. Anticipate a car at every curve, and STAY ON YOUR SIDE (unless you can see clearly ahead and want to straighten some curves, which I recommend).
My longest running drawing student Mae borrowed a photo of this cabin from me and drew it when she was brand new to drawing (but experienced at watercolor painting). She put in in an art show where local history buff and old friend Alan George insisted that it had been drawn by me, despite her name being on the drawing. That was a long time ago, but Mae and I still get a laugh out of remembering it.
I drew this one. It is the oldest cabin in Mineral King.
August always feels like the longest month to me. Endless heat. Sometimes wildfires start and then we have heat and smoke. Not my favorite month. To quote my niece when she was about 3, “It’s my worst favorite.”
Sharon, I scooted over so the small red fir doesn’t block the gap, but then the boulder is centered. (Paintings fix these flaws.)
In order to do my August calendar picture post and the Learned-in-July-List in a timely manner, this week’s Mineral King report is landing on the wrong day. Flex with me, Readers!
It was a time of many people in our neighborhood, with much socializing and renewal of friendships. I felt as if I fit in, never mind that my buddies were 8 and 10.
I did no real hiking, only walks. It is weird to me that I resist going on something as pleasant as a walk with friends. . . cue the whinging. . . it’s too hot, I want to knit, this is a good book. . . When I push myself to get off my duff (what’s a “duff”? Dunno, it came from my dad’s vocabulary), it is always worth the effort.
These guys were tired. Horses and mules don’t often lie down. I wonder if the one on the right is named Spot
The destination was Soda Springs, about 1-1/2 mile from the bridge, an unmarked trail known to locals but occasionally frequented by other folks. It is a spot where we often take visitors when we want them to actually enjoy the walk instead of dragging them straight up one of the other trails or hauling them behind us for long distances to lakes.
The flowers continue to amaze and delight this year with their profusion, abundance, and variety.
Soda Springs is a peculiar little spot of water bubbling out of the ground. People swear that it is carbonated; I think it tastes like the drinking fountains at Hartland Camp when I went to summer camp there. Ick. Metallic.
The flowers!! Looking upstream:
Looking downstream:
Let’s end with an evening shot of Farewell Gap with the Crowley Family Cabin.
Dadgum giant boulder hogging the center foreground. . .
This is the title of a very good book about Mineral King, written by a cabin guy who began working at the pack station at age 12.
Last Saturday Kevin Alltucker spoke at the annual Mineral King Preservation Society’s Picnic in the Park. Great storyteller, excellent speaker, knew how to reach the crowd and handle a microphone. He took lots of questions, and he quit before we were tired of hearing him. (The bulk of the crowd was behind and around me.)
I think you ought to buy a copy of the book. Really!
Too bad you weren’t there in person; it was $15 that day, instead of $18. No problemo—I’m confident that you can afford the extra $3.
Wildflower
Meanwhile, I continued to wrestle with my iPhone14 and got these photos of a flower that was at the end of the Blue/Purple chapter in Mineral King Wildflowers (sold out, so sorry, but not terribly sorry because there might be another book coming next summer…)
50 years ago today I got medevacked* off Sawtooth.
A group of high school kids were on a backpacking trip in Mineral King, a week long loop. We were fully chaperoned by experienced adults, age 32. (Why does that no longer seem like an adult age??)
We camped at Columbine Lake below Sawtooth with a layover day planned. A group wanted to climb Sawtooth on the next day, and although I was tired and a bit afraid, I chose to go. My dear cousin Ruthie was part of the group and I didn’t want to be left out or let people know that I was a chicken.
The leaders wanted to try a new route up Sawtooth. Meant nothing to me, because I was just following along.
That was foolish. We were climbing up a chute, and following someone up a chute makes you vulnerable to falling rocks.
Sure enough, I got blammed** in the forehead by a falling rock knocked loose from above, saw it coming, and had no place to go or time to move. According to the eyewitnesses, I summersaulted 50-60 feet down the chute causing more rocks to fall, thinking the entire time, “I have to stop, I have to stop!”
When I stopped, I wiggled my feet to be sure I wasn’t paralyzed, realized I still had my contact lenses in, and that there was blood running down my face.
The leaders above got everyone down carefully. I remember saying to Jerry Peters as he passed by, “Don’t look at me; my face is all bloody.” Thanks, Captain Obvious, and why did I care if Jerry saw blood all over my face?
Mr. Leader stayed with me, and Mrs. Leader got everyone back down to Columbine Lake. The biggest strongest boy, Matt Moffett, got chosen to run to Mineral King for help. He ran the 8 or 10 miles to a crank phone in the Sawtooth parking lot, where he called for help. (I still have no idea how a crank phone works or who he called.)
This is not a crank phone, but it’s the only phone picture I have.
Eventually a helicopter arrived, and a few people and gear were unloaded. I remember it having trouble figuring out where to land, and that it made several trips. I also remember that Mr. Leader was shivering, because at one point during our wait it hailed a little bit. I finally told him to take his jacket back because no matter how many layers I had, I continued to shiver. Shock, I think.
There was a gurney, ropes, helmets, lots of people with rock-climbing vocabulary. According to Mr. Leader, rocks still fell occasionally as they moved me onto the gurney and into the helicopter. The inside, not the outside.
We flew to Ash Mt. where an ambulance was waiting. It wasn’t until then that I gave them my parents’ phone number, because what were they going to do knowing I was injured but inaccessible?
It was upsetting to have them cut the legs of my new jeans, and it was thrilling to know that we ran the 4-way stop on Highway 198 (this was pre-traffic light, but everyone still calls that intersection toward Exeter “The Four Way”).
Broken collarbone, lots of cuts and bruises, 2 black eyes (I didn’t let my Dad take a photo, and now I sort of regret it out of curiosity, but not too much),and a hematoma on my leg merited one night in the hospital. It was hard to walk, and eventually I figured out why: I had major blisters on my heels that prevented my feet from going flat on the floor. Those stupid hiking boots were brutal, but everyone wore them. Give me Crocs anyday over those beastly immovable ankle weights.
These boots weren’t really made for walking; it was a marketing scheme.
Matt was taken in by one of the cabins on the parking lot and fed enormous amounts of food, which he reported barfing up afterward. He became my boyfriend during my senior year in high school, a good guy, but we weren’t a match made to go the distance. (A 16-year old is not wise enough nor ready to choose a lifemate.)
While in college, I returned to climb Sawtooth with a group of friends. We took the conventional route, it clouded up when we got on top so there was no view down to the valley, and it was so scary that I sat down and cried. One of the guys had a rope with him and helped me back down with the rope around my waist while he kept me secure (Thank you, Doug!!)
Sawtooth. It’s good to paint and draw and see from Visalia as a landmark, but other people are welcome to climb it. I prefer to go to White Chief or the Franklin/Farewell junction.
P.S. Mr. and Mrs. Leader have remained part of my life, dear friends with whom I correspond regularly and love like family (minus squabbles that sometimes accompany family relationships).
P.P.S. Trail Guy doesn’t like Sawtooth either. We are a match made to go the distance.
The idea was to hike somewhere during my most recent stay in Mineral King, but instead, I just hung out at the cabin with a few forays out to attempt to photograph a few wildflowers. I also ventured out to photograph a cabin to draw, but in case the cabin owner is one of my tens of readers, I won’t be sharing that info. It’s ‘posed to be a surprise. So, this post is another glimpse into cabin life.
We looked inside the Honeymoon Cabin, which is a mini museum for the Mineral King Preservation Society. It is tiny, but the phone-camera makes the room look spacious. I’m guessing it is about 10×12’.
I’ve been confused by the name of a flower: rein orchis? rein orchid? It depends on which wildflower book you are reading. I found this in a very old wildflower book.
We had to check on a friend’s cabin because he couldn’t get there and needed to learn about a potential propane leak. While Trail Guy poked around, I did too.
A great deal of knitting took place, which was good, because last week I learned that the sweater I’m making for a friend was too small, so three weeks of knitting hit the frog pond*. (If you are a knitter, you may be aware of the sad fact that swatches lie.)
Hey Reader Kathy W., this photo of Sawtooth is for you.
It took many attempts to get these photos because I can’t seem to figure out how to force my iPhone 14 to focus on what I choose. It has a mind of its own. Yes, I have tapped on the thing I want focused, but it just sits there obstinately blurry, waiting for me to press the shutter.
This was along the road.
It was mostly uneventful—I vacuumed the cabin, swatted biting flies, did some sketching for the commission, scratched fly bites, visited with many cabin neighbors, sprayed more insect repellent just in case it might discourage the flies, split a little wood, scratched more, and finished reading two books: Mostly What God Does by Savannah Guthrie, and Communion: Finding my Way Back to Faith by J.D. Vance. Both of those deserve 5 stars.
And thus we conclude another report on cabin life in Mineral King.
A faraway friend got a thrill and texted me about it.
She was in the downtown area of her town, went into a gift shop, and was floored to see two pencil drawings of Mineral King. Upon recognizing them, she took some photos and texted me.
These were reproduction prints which used to be my “bread and butter” type art. It was almost automatic when I finished a new drawing to get it printed, sign, number, package, and sell it.
I guess someone who lives 700 miles away got tired of these two drawings and somehow they ended up in this gift shop.
This is Beulah, which was the historic name of Mineral King. The collage was done using historic photos, and these prints didn’t sell nearly as well as drawings of current scenes. It is priced at $295!!
That’s okay. I get tired of the art hanging on my walls and rotate it out. Unless it is my own painting. Wait, I do pull those off the walls if they seem appropriate for a particular show or a potential customer has expressed an interest.
This is my first version of Farewell Gap with the Crowley Family cabin. I’ve drawn it many times since, and if you look at the drawings in chronological order, the growth is evident. (The growth of the artist’s skill, not those trees, one of which is now history.) This is priced at $150 or maybe $195—my spy was so excited that she forgot the amount!
The shop owner was quite thrilled; having someone recognize the subject and the artist validated her selection of merchandise.
Thank you, ‘70s Ranger Daughter Mari for discovering this “vintage cabin art”!! And thank you for getting in touch to tell me the story and sharing your photos!
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.
