Milestone Basin and Vidette Creek 2014
August 15 – Onion Valley to Kearsarge Lakes
August 16 – Kearsarge Lakes to Vidette Lakes
August 17 – Over Deerhorn Saddle
August 18 – Over Harrison Pass
August 20 – Milestone Basin to near JMT
August 21 – Over Forester Pass
August 22 – Over Kearsarge Pass
August 23 – Flower Lake to Onion Valley
The
primary destination on this year's trip was Milestone Basin, which we
had planned to visit in 2000 via the same approach but failed to cross
Harrison Pass. This year we took a different route to get to
Harrison
Pass, and we crossed it successfully and followed our planned
itinerary! In order to avoid Shepherd Pass and add another
off-trail area that we haven't been, we opted to enter via Kearsarge
Pass and visit the valley of Vidette Creek and Lakes, and cross
Deerhorn Saddle which is at the head of that valley. This saddle
gives direct access to Harrison Pass, which stands on the boundary
between Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. We visited the
upper Kern River basin from here, including Lake South America, and
then visited beautiful Milestone Basin, which was a pleasure to travel
off-trail in due to mostly friendly terrain of grass and slabs.
We returned via trail over Forester Pass and Kearsarge Pass.
Weather this year was great! We missed a fairly long period of
unsettled weather by just a few days. We had a few days of no
clouds of all, then mostly unthreatening clouds other than our night in
Milestone Basin where we had some thunder but no rain, at least in the
basin where we were camped.
