After the pass, the trail decended along Potter Creek through pleasant but unremarkable pine forest. Got back to the trailhead around 4.

Snowdrift in the parking lot from my previous trip to Kaiser. See next picture caption.

Some days nothing seems to go as planned...


Since it was my first trip to Sierra National Forest and I had downloaded directions from Mapquest. The trailhead was on Deer Creek Lane and Mapquest's search for this street gave a destination slightly to the north of Fresno. (I think it couldn't find the destination and defaulted to the center of California) This was close enough to the correct route that didn't realize that I was headed in the wrong direction until I was on route 41 headeing into Yosemite.

Once in Huntington lake, I missed the turnoff to the trailhead and headed up Hunting Lake Road towards the (still closed) Kaiser Pass for about 10 minutes before turning around. Was running dangerously low on gas and the Huntington Lake station was closed for the season. (Made it back to Shaver Lake on fumes at the end of the day)

Deer Creek Lane is a quarter mile long dirt road that ends at the D&F pack station. The road was dry for the entire length except for a small patch of snow right at the end near the trailhead. (See previous photo). I mistakeny thought that this would be passable and ended up with my Acura beached on the snowdrift. Using my tire chain box, I was able to scoop out enough snow to get the jack under the car. Extending the jack fully unbeached the car and allowed me to lurch it back off of the drift a foot at a time. Repeating this process a half dozen times freed the car.

In a fit of complete stupidity, I decided that the snowbank was passable on the uphill side (the left side of the prior picture) and proceeded to get the car stuck again. Was *not* a happy camper at this point. It was not as seriously mired this time and a few iterations of the jack got me over to the parking area. (On the way out, I revved up and hit the bank w/ enough speed to push me over w/o issue)

At this point I was hot and tired and not much in the mood for a hike, but I gave it a go anyway. Brought my snowshoes and needed them after about 8000ft when the snowline started. The trail was not tree tagged and was near impossible to follow with the snow cover. The Garmin basemap (and the USGS topo for that matter) are not terribly accurate of the current trail in the area and I ended up offtrail ascending to east side of College Rock. It was slow and exhausting trudge through very wet snow.

At this point, my colon decided that it had had enough of the Taco Bell that I had eaten yesterday and prompted an emergency pit stop. (An interesting exercise in balance and dextertiy in snowshoes) As I was sitting in the snow and stuffing my used TP into an empty Power Bar Wrapper for packout, I decided I had had enough for one day and began the decent back to the trailhead.

So, in summary: 8 hours of driving, 2 hours of jacking up my car, and 2 hours of hiking so I could take a crap in the snow at 9000ft.
Not one of my better trips.