In the morning we woke up fairly early and geared up to hike up to Summit Lake. We only hiked about 2.5 miles the second day but it was steep! We climbed about 1,800’ in steep switchbacks up to the lake. On the way we saw a young buck who was ahead of us on the trail and watched us as we watched him for quite some time. Once we left the dense forest and started climbing up the last few rocky switchbacks before Summit Lake we admired stunning wildflower gardens of scarlet gilia, pride of the mountain, and a bright yellow buckwheat. We also saw a helicopter turn over us, presumably monitoring the fire burning nearby on Maggie Mountain.
We crossed over the border to Sequoia National Park and arrived at Summit Lake right about lunchtime. As we started to eat lunch we began to hear thunder and see dark clouds moving in from the east. That confirmed that we would stay put at Summit Lake for the rest of the day so we set up our tents near the east shore. It didn’t rain until about 4:00 pm and only rained for about 20 minutes so in the meantime I took a brief dip in the lake. After the brief rain the sun came out again and dried everything off again.
We didn’t see anybody else hiking on the first day but on the second while at Summit Lake we saw 8 people including 3 that camped on the west shore of the lake and 3 guys that had a dog with them. For shame, dogs aren’t allowed on park trails! And the poor dog… they had a pack for him that was very lopsided and he was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes :( |
