Day hike to a worldclass Sierra view
From 10,365foot Mitchell Peak, the view is so surreal that it can feel like you’re living in a vintage Ansel Adams photo.
Turning around, you’ll see a full frontal of the Sierra crest that spans more than 100 miles roughly from Mount Whitney in the north to the 14,000foot Palisades and beyond. In closer range, the Great Western Divide rises to your right, 13,570foot Mount Brewer is straight ahead, and to your left, Kings Canyon extends for 25 miles into the heart of the high Sierra.
Mitchell Peak gets overlooked because the camps, trailhead and wilderness area are located outside adjacent Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park.
Up on top, the air is cool, clear and thin. On most afternoons lately, towering cumulus have formed over the high Sierra in advance of short, intense thunderstorms with booming thunder rolls and pounding hail and rain. By then, you’ll be back at camp, listening to the rain hit the tent for an hour or so, and recounting one of America’s greatest day hikes.
From the Marvin Pass Trailhead in Sequoia National Forest, it’s a 6mile roundtrip hike with a 1,900foot climb to Mitchell Peak in the Jennie Lakes Wilderness. The length is short enough for a day trip from the Sequoia High Sierra Camp or the nearby primitive Big Meadows Campground, and the climb is hard enough to know you have earned something special.
Spending the night
From most of the Bay Area, it’s about a threehour drive to Fresno, another hour to the Big Stump entrance for Kings Canyon National Park, then 25 miles, all on pavement, into Sequoia National Forest and to the Big Meadows Campground. This is a series of four pretty but primitive campgrounds, with no running water, showers or flush toilets, available by reservation, along Big Meadows Road.
Just past the campgrounds, you then turn right on Marvin Pass Road. The road turns to dirt — with a few big potholes where highclearance vehicles are recommended — and is routed to the staging area and trailhead for Marvin Pass. From here, it’s a 0.75mile walk to the Sequoia High Sierra Camp (a luggage pickup is provided), perched at an elevation of 8,500 feet.
This is a luxury wilderness camp patterned after the High Sierra Camps in Yosemite National Park. You sleep in a bed in a tent cabin, with a restroom with showers and electricity available, and three meals, including a gourmet dinner, provided and wine or beer available. This costs $250 a night, is largely off the radar and has space available through midSeptember (on the other hand, the High Sierra Camps in Yosemite and Sequoia national parks haven’t opened this summer).
For those who prefer national park accommodations and campgrounds, it’s about a 45minute drive from Grant Grove Village in King Canyon National Park to the Marvin Pass Trailhead. Like most national parks, most campsites and lodging accommodations are booked for summer here long in advance.
Hike to the summit
From either the Sequoia High Sierra Camp or the Marvin Pass Trailhead, it’s a short trek through forest to where the trails merge. You pass along a gorgeous meadow sprinkled with corn lilies, starflowers, blue bells and scarlet gilia, and then start the climb. Mosquitoes are often common at midday near the meadow.
You gain 700 feet in 1.3 miles to reach a saddle at Marvin Pass. As you arrive, you will see the signed border for the Jennie Lakes Wilderness at an elevation of 9,100 feet. Here you turn left, where the trail runs along a sub ridge and deeper into forest less than a mile to another junction. A handscrawled signpost points left to Mitchell Peak (and ahead to Kanawyer Gap and Rowell Creek). You turn left again and the climb turns into an aerobic heart thumper.
It climbs about 1,000 feet in a mile, and at 10,000 feet, you break through forest at tree line and arrive at a boulder field. The peak looms just ahead. A best route up is marked with cairns, arcing first to the left and then up, and the first views are off to your left, of the rim of Kings Canyon.
In a nonpareil moment as you gain the top, the payoff view of the Sierra crest is revealed all at once. A true pinnacle summit is available to crown the moment. Nearby, a concrete platform, all that is left of a former Forest Service fire lookout, provides a great seat for a trail lunch.
So many peaks, ridges and canyons are in view that it is difficult to identify many of them, like looking into a clear mountain night sky filled with more than a thousand stars. Below is the Sugarloaf Valley. With a map, you can pick out the Monarch Divide and beyond across miles of wilderness in the Kings Canyon, Sequoia and Whitney wilderness areas.
Of the great views in California that are overlooked, this could be the best.