August 3, 2025
Road’s End to Granite Lake via Copper Creek

1.

I wake at 4:50, ten minutes before my alarm, and quickly pack up my little camp. The campground’s still asleep. Someone’s snoring somewhere in the middle distance.

The sun’s first rays are just peeking over the mountains as I start the drive toward the South Fork Kings. A family of deer run across the road, then half a dozen squirrels.

Cold coffee and a Franz hand pie as I drive. My stomach feels strange, nauseous with nerves.

Road’s End is just waking up when I get there. An older man sits on the tailgate of his truck, drinking coffee. A group of women stand near the bathroom, shoving sweatshirts in their packs. I throw a few things in the bear box, lift my pack, and start up Copper Creek.

2.

The trailhead’s not high—maybe 5000’—but I immediately feel winded and weird. Nerves again.

As I climb, the South Fork’s valley stretches below. Grand Sentinel and Avalanche, maybe The Sphinx in the distance.

3.

The trail switchbacks for the first 1500’, then levels out to follow Copper Creek’s drainage into a minor aspen wood. The bugs get bad above 8000’, but never hit Cascade levels of apocalypse.

Then another set of switchbacks, this time through chaparral and fields of flowers. Me-sized boulders are perched, seemingly at random, every few hundred feet.

4.

I eat lunch where the trail leaves Copper Creek for good.

I’m already so, so tired. I’ve gained something like 4000’, and I have at least another thousand to go before things flatten out. I guess just one foot in front of the other.

A thousand feet and I don’t want to talk about how long later, I arrive at the unnamed pass between Copper and Granite Creeks. Then an easy descent to Granite Lake, my home for the night.

5.

Finding a flat spot at the lake turns out to be surprisingly difficult, but I eventually do find a small clearing between granite boulders on the far southeast side.

Ducks play on the near side of one of several islands and baby trout collect in the shallows near the shore. Below me, Granite Creek snakes through talus and trees toward its steep drop into the South Fork.

I eat my freeze dried something as the sky goes purple and a single big bird—a hawk, I think—circles above. My stomach’s still strange but everything else is perfect.

6.

Wind picks up after dark and I retreat to my tent, listen to an audiobook about the 2008 financial crisis. It feels odd, listening about all these made-up things—credit scores and mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps—as I watch a much realer world go dark.

The stars come out. I can hear the ducks from earlier gracelessly flying away.

August 4, 2025
Granite Lake to Horseshoe Lakes via Granite Pass and the State Lakes

7.

Day breaks to the sound of the ducks chattering on the lake. I imagine them gossiping about the night before, bragging about the fish they’ve caught, starting rumors about the hawk. Someone flies off—that flustered sound of awkward wings—and I wonder if the conversation’s gone awry.

I spend half an hour in the tent with the rainfly off, looking at the sky and trying to make out the conversation.

8.

Breakfast’s a struggle—I feel the altitude, and yesterday’s climb—but I get it down, and soon start up from the lake to the Monarch Divide and Granite Pass.

The way is wooded at first, but gradually opens to a plateau of grass and granite. From the Divide, views open to the Middle Fork Kings and the mountains beyond—the Black and White Divides, Ragged Ridge. Muir Pass is somewhere in the distance.

9.

From the Divide, the way passes through a series of lightly watered meadows. Dougherty Creek slowly assembles itself from a series of alpine trickles into a steady band of blue flowing through the forest.

I leave the main trail at Daugherty Meadow, and veer east toward the State and Horseshoe Lakes. The trail goes faint, and bugs get bad.

10.

Camp tonight’s an old stock site at the southernmost Horseshoe Lake.

Ninety years ago, a hundred Sierra Club hikers and horses passed through here on their way to Windy Ridge and Cartridge Creek, cutting in rough trail and clearing camps as they went. The trail’s still mostly here, faded and braided but followable. The camps, though, are only there if you squint to see history among the rocks and rubble.

11.

Deer come and go as the light gets soft. I eat dinner—freeze dried stroganoff—on a boulder that’s perfectly worn where I want to sit. I wonder how many other people have sat here in the last century.

Early to bed—I’m weirdly tired, despite a relatively short day. Some sort of insect’s singing along the lakeshore. Some sort of ghosts are sitting on the rocks above.