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Alta Peak

There were the usual three of us; Gant, Jared and I. We planned on driving up to Alta peak in Sequoia Kings Canyon and camping at the trail head, day hiking it and returning home the next night. The plan was basic and we kept to it, which is hard to believe but true. Alta turned out to have as fantastic a view as I’d heard so it was well worth the effort.

When we got to Visalia we grabbed dinner at some fancy place that Gant was going to pay for as a birthday meal for me. I ordered some regular food while the twins ordered some fancy feast. Well, go figure the kitchen or the server screwed up the fancy order and the two of them wound up getting something they neither wanted, nor liked. After nearly coming to tears the server got them their correct order and didn’t charge them at all for their meals which was nice of her. While we were eating dinnner, Gant and I were trying to plan out some details for the upcoming Death Valley marathon, but somehow Jared got lost in the conversation and thought we were talking about the Alta trip. This caused him much consternation and confusion and hopefully he will pay closer attention in the future.

We arrived somewhat late in Seki and started rather ingloriously by placing a tent where tents were not allowed. But, no matter. Jared brought his doorless tent, everyone but Gant brought a cot and we slept the night away, without any interference from wildlife or anything else. Jared made breakfast, not for everyone but for himself and we started off. The mileage was to be right around 7 miles, one way so we were figuring a pretty long day ahead of us. The morning was quite frosty, as evidenced by Gant’s wearing of more clothes than he usually does (There is a similarity between those two, you can’t deny that).

So, we hiked. The first significant landmark was Panther Gap, which was quite nice. We stopped here and had an extended brunch, while Jared told us about wanting to start a combination Frisbee/Volleyball team. From the Gap looking into California’s central valley it was covered with clouds from end to end as far as we could tell. Which made it easy to identify it’s southern end, bordered by Pinos and Frazier. That was pretty cool, basically seeing Gorman from Seki, over a hundred miles away.

Gant made some stunning observations about Jared’s clothing line, which seems to have been modeled far too closely after mine. Slightly frightening when you consider his resemblance to Private Pyle and Pyle’s subsequent mental breakdown.

So, after Panther gap, we continued on. Miles and miles and miles. Beautiful country of course, the western end of Sequoia Kings is quite lush in the lowlands. We were in the same general vicinity of day one of the High Sierra Trail. We crossed some of the same watersheds, though at higher elevations and saw the Mighty Black Kaweah, Eagle Scout peak as well as Lawson peak for those that read that HST story. Still was quite beautiful, even from as far away as we were.

Eventually, we pounded out the seven miles, passing into the Alpine zone and right by Tharp’s rock. We had gained the summit. Time to touch the tip top of it; Gant, Jared, Josh. The views were spectacular. From Pinos/Frazier in the south, to Whitney all the way out west across a sea of summits and to the north where solemn Banner and Ritter lie. Looking across the tablelands into the Great Western Divide kept our eyes captivated as we tried to identify just a few of the hundreds of peaks visible. Alta peak has a stupendous amount of Sierra Nevada real estate in view, within easy reach of most people. The route is only 15 miles round trip, the elevation isn’t too high, it’s only a few hours of driving from most of the major population centers in California but it’s so infrequently visited by any of the 37 million mouth breathers that share my state. Those people know not what they are missing.

The summit log did have a line in it that I think I’ll always remember. When you sign a summit log, you generally put the date, a small sentence or two, where you are from and your name. This log entry’s location was stated as, “Balls deep in yo mamma’s ass”.

Album of pictures from trip