Sawmill Pass and White Fork 2024
August 24 – Sawmill Pass Trailhead to Sawmill MeadowAugust 25 – Sawmill Meadow to Woods Lake
August 26 – Woods Lake Basin
August 27 – Woods Lake to Window Peak Lake
August 28 – Window Peak Lake to White Fork
August 29 – White Fork to Bench Lake
August 30 – Bench Lake to Twin Lakes
August 31 – Twin Lakes to below Mule Lake
September 1 – Below Mule Lake to Sawmill Pass Trailhead
This year's trip started at the Sawmill Pass trailhead between Big Pine and Independence on the eastern slope of the Sierra. We crossed into Kings Canyon National Park at Sawmill Pass and spent most of the trip there, with visits to two remote areas, Window Peak basin and White Fork basin. We then connected back to a trail at Bench Lake and closed the loop via the John Muir Trail over Pinchot Pass. We returned via the same trail we came in on.
Sawmill Pass has a reputation for being a difficult route. It starts in the desert at 4600 feet elevation and rises up to Sawmill Pass at 11,300 feet, for an elevation gain of 6700 feet. The trail is unmaintained, but we found it to be pretty good in most areas. There is no shade or water until you get up to around 7100 feet elevation. We had an unusally cool starting day so we didn't suffer from the desert heat even though we didn't start walking until 8am. We did lose the trail several times, in particular just above Sawmill Meadow. But there were no great difficulties.
We
had a built-in rest day on the third day in case it took us longer than
expected to get over Sawmill Pass. We used that day to do a day
hike to visit a few of the lakes in the Woods Lake basin. On the
fourth day, we headed down to the John Muir Trail and followed Woods
Creek downstream, leaving the trail just past the crossing of White
Fork. We headed up into the basin below Window Peak and camped at
the largest lake in that basin. Next two days we had two
off-trail passes, White Fork Saddle and White Fork Pass. The
first was fairly easy on the west side, but we encountered a lot of
loose talus on the east side down to the group of lakes in the White
Fork basin. Next day we traversed around toward White Fork Pass,
which looked like a wall from the south side. We followed a dry
stream bed up much of the slope that looked like sand but was solid
like concrete! The north side of the pass had difficult loose
talus and we were happy to get down to the first lake. The route
from there involved quite a bit of route finding to make our way to the
trail at Bench Lake. We had trails for the rest of the trip to close the loop and head back over Sawmill Pass.
We
saw the most people on our two JMT sections, and a few people on the
Sawmill Pass trail. We didn't see anyone in the off-trail
sections, although we did see some footprints. Weather was mostly
good, with clouds and a couple of sprinkles the first day (welcome for
the desert climb), and then after Pinchot Pass where we had clouds that
day and the next but with no rain. Nighttime temperatures varied
from just above freezing to the high 40's.
Our
best spot for pikas was at the lake in White Fork basin, where I got
some pictures and videos. We saw several marmots, including one
basking on a rock while we had lunch just north of Pinchot Pass.
There were some frogs near the trail just up from Woods Lake, and another frog at Lake 10515 below Woods Lake. And
a bald eagle soared overhead as we hiked in the desert the first day!
Note
that the elevation profile above does not include the day hike around Woods Lake.
Go
here to see
all of the pictures with the same captions at Google Photos.
Map
Below is an interactive map of the trek. The red track is the main backpacking route, the other track is a day hike. The green tent symbols are our campsites. The trailhead is the "P" symbol on the right side. We did the loop clockwise.
Click here for a full-page version of the interactive map
Click here to download the kml file of the tracks to load into other software like Google Earth