Sequoia & Kings Canyon - Backpacking the Twin Lakes Trail Part 3 - Scheduling and Reservations

This is part 3 of a 5 part series. Click here for Part 2.

Visiting During the Spring

The time of year you plan to take your trip is limited to times when the Twin Lakes trail is open.  The Lodgepole campground is open April 18 to November 28 mainly due to the amount of snow that is on the ground outside of this window.  We visited mid-March 2017 and the road to Lodgepole was closed at the General Sherman tree due to the high levels of snow.  The drifts were easily above 6 feet high in many areas.

The snow drifts at the General Sherman in the parking area in mid-March

There should be no problem accessing the Twin Lakes trail during the summer months. If your trip is planned for parts of the year other than summer, have a back-up plan as trails and campsites may not be accessible.

Despite the heavy snow and closed roads in the Spring, there are backpacking opportunities.  The open trails are found in the lower elevation foothills where the snow has melted and the weather conditions are more compatible with humans not accustomed to living in Siberia.

For spring break 2017, we backpacked the Middle Fork Trail in the foothills and found the main challenge to be the crossing of the small streams encountered along the trail.  The "small" streams were swollen, swift, and icy cold from the snow melt at the higher elevations.  We encountered people on the trail that turned around to hike out rather than cross a swift stream.  Below are pictures of the first stream crossing on the Middle Fork Trail. 

Visiting During the Summer

Summer months are the ideal time to visit despite the crowds of tourists.  You'll be in the wilderness while most tourists will stick to "glamping" in an RV parked at the Lodgepole campground.    We encountered very few people along the trail, and only 2-3 other campers at each lake.  We decided to stay one day at each lake, and we had the lake to ourselves until the late afternoon groups arrived and began to set up camp for the night.


Wilderness permits are required for any overnight trek outside of an official campground.  A reservation is not required outside of the normal season; you can arrive at an official permit station and self-register your wilderness permit in the off-season.  The season where reservations is required is from May 25th to September 22nd, and you can send in reservations starting at 12:01am Pacific Time on March 1st.  See the permit page for exact details.

I chose to set my reservation early so that there would be no issues with scheduling travel early enough for it to be cost effective.  I received a response to my reservation within roughly 2 weeks of submission.  The only downside is that it appears that the campground reservations can be made much farther in advance than the wilderness permits.  We would have ideally camped a single night at Lodgepole to acclimatize to the elevation, but all campgrounds were completely booked by the time we had our wilderness permit reservation confirmed.

Acclimatization

If you are someone that gets sick at high altitudes, you may have some trouble without proper acclimatization.  Ideally you'll want to stay a night at a drive-up campground before setting out on your hike so that your body becomes accustomed to a higher than normal altitude before climbing higher.

You'll want to do what is best for you in terms of altitude acclimatization.  We come from a city that is at about 100 feet above sea level but did not have the opportunity to sleep over night at a high altitude camp.   We spent one day before touring some of the high altitude sites before sleeping in a hotel at the bottom of the hill in Fresno.  None of us had a problem during the hike other than maybe some shortness of breath as we crossed the 10,000 ft level of the Silliman Pass.

Conclusion

As with any trip, planning ahead is the key to success.  Learn how to navigate the reservation process to ensure you have the proper permits for your wilderness hike.


Part 4 will cover outfitting for the trip....stay tuned!

Sequoia & Kings Canyon - Backpacking the Twin Lakes Trail Part 2 - Route Planning

This is part 2 in a 5 part series.  Click here for Part 1.

Route Planning

Any good backpacking trip should begin with a route plan.  This gives everyone a good idea of the distance they'll hike each day, plus you'll need to leave your plan with the park rangers so they know where to look for you if you don't come back at your scheduled time.  😀

Our plan was to spend two nights at Twin Lakes before hiking further into the wilderness to see the sights.  After Twin Lakes, we hike about 3 miles to cross Silliman Pass and down into the next valley over from Twin Lakes.  We would then stay two days visiting Ranger and Beville Lakes since they are only a half-mile apart.  We had originally planned to hike back to Twin Lakes and stay one more night, but we decided to hike back to Lodgepole a day early on the last night at Ranger Lake.  We woke up in the morning, broke camp, and hiked the entire 10 miles from Ranger Lake to Lodgepole.

Pro Tip: When you park your car before leaving for a wilderness trip, back into the parking space.  When we returned to the rental car after 4 days, the battery was dead.  The car had been parked head-in and jumper cables could not reach the battery from the rear of the car.  The gear shift was non-functional without the on-board computer having power, so we had to wait a while until a tow truck with extra long jumper cables arrived.

A bit of research about the Twin Lakes trail can give you some background on the difficulty and what to expect.  The trail head is located in the Lodgepole campground and is therefore an ideal starting point.  Lodgepole has a large parking lot where you can leave your car while you're out hiking.  Camping the first night in Lodgepole is a perfect way to acclimate to the altitude, but spaces are limited and need to be booked well in advance.

Planning Tools

When I first visited Twin Lakes as a Boy Scout, the route planning tools were limited to a topographic map and a compass.  Today the tools are significantly more sophisticated which makes it much easier to plan a wilderness trip.

Google Earth Pro is a free mapping and satellite imaging tool that is great for scouting locations.  Google Earth allows you to see your destination both as a topographic map and with images taken from above overlaying the map features.  This makes it easier to identify navigational landmarks that are helpful when hiking in the wilderness.  It is also nice to see other close-by points of interest that you can incorporate into your trip.

Taking a map of your planned route with you on the trip would be ideal.  The Google mapping tools aren't extremely effective unless you have an Internet connection - something that is universally unavailable in the wilderness.  Fortunately there are several hand-held GPS devices that can be used during planning as well as when navigating through the wilderness.

While there are several options for portable mapping (including some GPS type applications for your smart phone), I chose to use the Garmin eTrex 20x hand-held GPS with the Garmin TOPO 100k map package.  It runs on AA batteries, and I only changed the batteries once during the entire trip after heavily using it for 3 days.  The free Garmin Basecamp software uses the device's map and provides measuring and route planning tools. I was able to identify the trails and points of interest we would visit and export these to the device.  At each trail-head, I simply click the route I've saved on the device with Basecamp and follow the trail.

Route Maps

The maps and graphs in this section were generated from Garmin Basecamp. I carried the routes and way-points in my eTrex 20x; the GPS was not only helpful in tracking our progress but it also helped us find the trail again in places where the trail was not marked very well. 
 
The trail from Lodgepole to Twin Lakes is fairly well maintained so it is difficult to unintentionally stray off the trail. (It was only beyond Twin Lakes that the trail became slightly more difficult to track.)  The trip to Twin Lakes is roughly 7 miles; we chose to hike straight through to Twin Lakes the first day.  If 7 miles is too much for you, there is at least one campground roughly mid-way to Twin Lakes. We did not encounter anyone camping along the trail as most people were opting to hike straight to Twin Lakes.


The picture below shows the trail from Lodgepole to Twin Lakes, and you can download the KML file for use in mapping software here: Lodgepole to Twin Lakes.kml

Track to Twin Lakes from Lodgepole

The saying "No pain, no gain," definitely applies to the Twin Lakes trail.  The image below shows the elevation plot of the trail from Lodgepole to Twin Lakes.  The total elevation change across the 7 miles is nearly 3000 feet.  The bottom of the dip near the 4 mile mark is a stream crossing where it is a good idea to rest and replenish water; the remainder of the hike after this point is brutal.

Elevation Plot of the Twin Lakes Trail

The image below shows the next leg of our trip from Twin Lakes.  It was roughly 3 miles from Twin Lakes to Ranger Lake.  You can download the KML file for this leg here: Twin Lakes to Ranger Lake.kml

Track to Ranger/Beville Lake from Twin Lakes

The journey from Twin Lakes over the Silliman Pass is roughly a 700 foot elevation change.  It was a challenge as the air became thinner with the increase in elevation. 

Elevation Plot of the Twin Lakes to Ranger/Beville Lakes Trail

 The high views of Twin Lakes from the trail were spectacular.  At one point we even heard some wolves howling in the mountains overlooking Twin Lakes.

Overlooking Twin Lakes on the trail to Silliman Pass

Overlooking the valley of the Twin Lakes

One of the Twin Peaks in the distance on the trail between Twin Lakes and Silliman Pass

We were rewarded with magnificent views at the top of the Silliman Pass (elevation: 10, 160 feet).  We stopped for a rest and had a few Clif Bars for lunch. 

Taking a break at the top of the Silliman Pass

 The views on the downward side of the trail from the top of the Silliman Pass were also spectacular.

View from the trail between Silliman Pass and Ranger Lake

The trail brings you to an overlook above Ranger Lake.  

Overlooking Ranger Lake, Sequoia

Part 3 of this series covers scheduling and reservations.

Sequoia & Kings Canyon - Backpacking the Twin Lakes Trail Part 1 - Introduction

This is part 1 of a 5 part series about planning a backpacking trip following the Twin Lakes trail in Sequoia National Park.  Click here for Part 2.

"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks." - John Muir

I've been a hiker all of my life.  As a kid growing up in Santa Clarita, CA there were plenty of undeveloped mountainous areas to explore.  At the age where I was in elementary school,  there was not a Saturday morning where I missed a walk along the local hilltops or down into nearby canyon.  These weren't large hills or deep canyons nor were they wilderness areas far from civilization; they were, however, wild and full of artifacts of bygone eras.

The area was once known as Rancho San Fransisco and history has it as the place where gold was first discovered in California.  There were always artifacts and remnants of the mining and agricultural history of the area to find.  Exploring new areas played well with a child's curiosity and delight in experiencing the thrill of discovery.


In the mid-1980's, I was a member of Boy Scout troop 585 and we were planning a big backpacking trip to Sequoia.  This wasn't going to be the usual overnight camping trip - this was a serious wilderness trek.  It was going to be rough, but the boys ranging in age from 12 to 14 were more than ready to go.  We set out one summer morning at the Jenny Lake trailhead and finished the trek at the Twin Lakes trailhead in Lodgepole.

One of the most memorable things about that trip was spending two days at Twin Lakes.  At the time, there was what I would describe as a glacier sitting on the face of the canyon wall at the east edge of the lake.  I remember the lake being quite beautiful; crystal clear waters, plenty of climbable rocky formations to keep a bunch of rowdy boy scouts occupied, snowball fights near on the glacier, and the serenity that comes with being far from the noise of civilization.  For many years, I dreamed of going back and taking my kids with me to share the experience.



I'm by no means an expert hiker but I am also not a beginner.  It occurred to me that there may be a great many people out there that would enjoy taking a trip to the wilderness but perhaps did not know where to start.  If this is you, then you can take some tips from here and maybe you'll be able to get out and enjoy the wilderness experience.

This is part 1 of a 5 part series.  Check back periodically to if the next part in the series has been posted.

Pictures from the Trail

Breathtakingly beautiful meadow along the Twin Lakes trail

The Serenity of Twin Lakes

Camping in our REI Quarter Dome Hammocks at Twin Lakes Sequoia