Continued...
We had nearly run out of summits in the Huntington Lake area of the Sierra
National Forest, having only a few
left to keep us busy for a few hours. The first two were simple affairs, but
the last, Kerckhoff Dome, was a bit of a workout and a nice way to finish off
the roadtrip before driving home.
Black Point
This summit is located west of Huntington Lake, on the edge of the Kaiser
Wilderness. A ,
less than half a mile in length, goes to the top from
at the end of a forest road. There are two ways to reach the
trailhead. Well-graded Black Point Rd (8S32) is the usual, but longer route that
forks off paved Huntington Lake Rd below the dam. If coming from Huntington
Lake, there's a shorter route on Dowville W (8S04) that cuts through the
community of Huntington Lake. This road is a little rougher, but nominal
high-clearance suffices. The topo map shows the TH about 200ft lower down the
slope than it currently is. If one continues on 8S32 to the saddle with
Mushroom Rock, the right fork will lead to the current trailhead. It took about
25min to hike the trail to the summit. It is signed as a "National Recreation
Trail", a designation I
thought was reserved for more significant trails.
I looked up the NRT database later and discovered that all sorts of silly
urban trails have this designation (as an example, the Highway 237 Bikeway
Trail in San Jose is one of the worst bike paths imaginable - a badly
connected series of paths through sterile commercial tracts and along a noisy
freeway. But I digress). The provide a nice overlook of the
Kaiser Wilderness to and Huntington Lake to
. The Central Valley can be seen to ,
but it was mostly obscured by the usual haze.
Sunset Point
This summit lies southwest of Huntington Lake. There are communication towers
near the top and a service road that makes it easy. The road is at
,
but signs do not restrict foot traffic. An on the
road has it as "Art's Trail", perhaps something originating from nearby Keola
Camp, currently closed. The summit has two bumps of similar height.
are on the eastern bump where the road ends. A
continues through the brush to the open
where a pair of wooden crosses are found on some open
piles of rocks. It took less than 15min to hike out to this point with a nice
view overlooking the below Huntington Lake. To the
south, we could just see the top of , our last summit.
One could probably hike down to it from Sunset Point, but there is an easier
way so we returned to the jeep.
Kerckhoff Dome
Kerckhoff Dome is a somewhat obscure climbers' spot located between Huntington
Lake and the small community of Big Creek 2,000ft lower. The town is home to
a ConEd Powerstation. A trio of , or penstocks as they're
called, bring water down from Huntingon Lake to run turbines at the power
station. Climbers hike up the steep steps alongside the penstocks to reach the
base of the dome 800ft above the roadway. Our route would be from above, not
below, since we were interested in reaching the top, not the base of the dome. A
runs along the penstock parallel to, and below the road
to Sunset Point, ending where the pipes begin their plunge down the steep
hillside. We drove a short distance on dirt roads before reaching
, leaving us about a mile each way to our destination. We
found a use trail that shortcutted part of our route to the service road, then
out to at the end. Now for
the hard part - brushy cross-country travel taking us 500ft down to Kerckhoff
Dome.
The going was terribly ,
descending as we did from the gate
house. There is a
about 200ft down where the brush relented to give us a better view
on Kerckhoff Dome. This was very discouraging
at first since it was quickly apparent that there was a significant cliff
immediately below this flat, rocky area. After looking around, it seemed if we
moved east we could find a route down, and we set off in that direction.
Almost immediately we came across the first of a
that proved to be a very workable use trail down to Kerckhoff Dome. It was
in places, but never more than easy class 3 and the ducks
were sufficient to . How long this established route
had been around was impossible
to say, but we were very thankful for its existence which took much of the
guesswork out of getting to our goal. At the saddle before the final 100ft
of gain to the top of the dome, Karl and I took separate routes that worked out,
but his seemed to follow the regular ducked route I'd missed and had less
brush to boot. provides a neat bird's-eye view of the
with .
The only sign of humans we found at the summit was a single
that had been left on a boulder below the highpoint.
We left atop the highest point before heading back.
On our return we followed the ducks in ,
finding them give
out about where we'd originally found them, but the use trail continuing through
the forest that bypassed the nasty brush we'd encountered earlier. We
to the service road in about 30min, and another 20min to get
us back to the
jeep. It wasn't yet 10:30a when we finished with this last one, but we said
goodbye and went our separate ways. I would find a place to shower before
driving home while Karl went on to do four other easy summits in the area that
I had done on Thursday before he'd arrived. Another successful trip in the
bag...