Sacatar Meadows WSA HP
Peak 7,421ft P300

Continued...

Our last day in the Southern Sierra was a short one. TomB needed to get home early, but would join us for a first hike if it was short enough. Someone had noticed the previous afternoon that there was a "new" summit not half a mile from our campsite along Kennedy Meadows Rd. It seems that LoJ had added "Wilderness Study Area" HPs to the database, places that presumeably one day will be graduated to Wilderness status. The remaining three of us did only one other summit before calling it a day.

Sacatar Meadows WSA HP

This proposed Wilderness area is small and comprised of several parcels that may become part of the existing Sacatar Trail Wilderness if approved. The highpoint of these small parcels is found just to the east of Kennedy Meadows Rd, at the southeast end of Big Pine Meadow. It took less than 15min to make our way to the highpoint from our campsite. The final hundred feet of the summit is comprised of granite blocks that provide some class 2-3 scrambling and decent views in an otherwise forested area. This might have been the most technically challenging bit yet for Iris's knee since surgery, and she was understandably slow and careful about ascending it. We left a register here before returning the same way.

Peak 7,421ft

After Tom had left us back at camp, three of us piled into the Jeep for a 15min drive to this lower summit a few miles to the north that happens to be in another section of the same WSA. Access is a bit trickier as there are rural homesteads along the road we used to reach it from the west. We found a locked but unsigned gate at the end of the road which may or may not have led to BLM lands. We think our route was all public lands, but don't hold us to it. Our mile-long route went through the southern end of a branch of Sacatar Meadow. Two buildings shown on the topo map have been reduced to a pile of rubble and their foundations. This may be in preparation for it becoming Wilderness, or maybe someone gave up on a remodeling project. We then went up forested slopes much like those on the first summit, again finding a jumble of granite blocks occupying the highest ground. The highpoint is a six-foot block sitting atop another, enough room to hold two folks. Views overlook Kennedy and Sacatar Meadows to the northwest, Long Canyon to the north, and Sacatar Canyon to the northeast. Another summit, Peak 8,100ft, lies another mile to the southeast, but we decided to leave that for another time. We left a second register before heading back down the same route, calling it a day when we finished up around 9:30a.

Author:

Is this a correction?