It was below freezing when we woke up and the barometer had dropped a bit overnight, but it was still sunny when we started hiking. However by the time we crossed the border into King’s Canyon National Park, we could see clouds off to the west. Over the next couple hours we saw the high peaks above us become wrapped in lenticular clouds and by lunchtime there wasn’t much blue sky left.
We passed a couple park rangers who told us the chance of precip had increased from 20% to 50% so we figured we were definitely in for some weather that afternoon. In the Evolution Valley we had our one and only stream ford of the entire trip…all the large rivers had bridges and all the small creeks so far had good rocks to hop over, but this one we finally had to take the shoes off and wade shin deep to the other side. Aside from our moleskin and foot tape getting wet, it was actually nice to give the feet a cold bath mid-day.
As we neared the final 800’ of switchbacks to get above treeline and into the upper Evolution Valley it began to snow and we ran into several parties descending that told us the weather was bad up high. We decided to stop a little short of our goal (Evolution Lake) and get camp set up while it was still fairly dry. I still felt a little weak from my bug, so it was nice to call it a day a little early and spend the afternoon playing cards and reading.
Heading into Kings Canyon…where’d those clouds come from?
Almost at Evolution Lake…but shortly thereafter it starts snowing
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