Summer’s Pinnacle

MINERAL KING, Calif. —  July 1970: Seven-year-old Jeff clings to a thick rope suspended from an ancient fir tree, shouting that he can see up the mountains to forever. Being six months pregnant, I am less mobile than my son, but my heart feels just as full as I contemplate this lush subalpine valley.

We’ve traveled here by caravan with four families, enduring the last 20 miles of hairpin turns because we want our kids to experience a wilderness beyond the congested campgrounds we’ve encountered at Yosemite. At night, we sit around the campfire, eating s’mores and planning how our lives will go. Jeff is enchanted by the Mineral King area of Sequoia National Park, and I promise we’ll return.

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But plans change. Somehow we never did return to Mineral King. On a recent Mother’s Day hike and picnic, he reminded me of that old promise. Married now, he said that he wanted to restart our family camping tradition. If he organized a weekend trip to Mineral King, would I go?

Jeff’s marriage has happily brought together two sets of in-laws who have become friends. So early on a June morning, my husband, Dan, and I set out in caravan with my son and his wife, Sonet, and her parents, Kent and Shelley. As we descended the Grapevine into the San Joaquin Valley, the Sierra almost hidden by a dusty haze, I wondered if Mineral King would be all that Jeff remembered it to be.

I needn’t have worried. That harrowing drive up the mountain and the defeat in 1978 of the Disney Co.’s plan to build a major ski resort here have preserved the area’s sense of remoteness. The weather still determines the length of the camping season, typically early June through late September. Campsites are limited in number; trailers are not allowed, and motor homes are not recommended. Facilities remain simple: outhouses, a community spigot for washing up, no electricity. Because we arrived early on Friday, we found a choice spot to pitch our tents in Cold Springs Campground, near the East Fork of the Kaweah River.

To acclimate to the 7,500-foot elevation, the kids went fishing, while we parents walked the nature trail through a meadow blanketed with bluebells, Indian paintbrush and lupine. Our campsite attracted a curious yearling mule deer as we set up for dinner. It soon became apparent just how rusty my camping skills had become. I’d forgotten the ingredients for s’mores, and the unseasoned wood we’d brought created a smoky campfire.

Because the women had shopped for, prepared and marinated the chicken, while the men were to cook it, we encountered a vexing conflict regarding barbecue protocol. Advice was offered and disregarded; the men prevailed. Dinner was excellent: fragrant grilled chicken, rice and beans, and a foil-wrapped medley of squash, tomato and onion. We washed it all down with cold beer and wine and, not content to stop there, brewed hot chocolate to go with Sonet’s homemade brownies.

Bears are a problem in Mineral King, so we stowed all our food in the metal storage lockers at each campsite and slept undisturbed in the cool mountain air.

We breakfasted lightly in anticipation of the lengthy hike Jeff had planned. A 10-minute drive brought us up the valley to the trail head, where the high Sierra rises sharply above green meadows. The trail led past cabins dating back to the early 1900s, when the U.S. Forest Service began leasing sites. Dozens of marmots, beguiling rodents the size of a cat, had draped themselves like rugs over sun-warmed scattered boulders. Be forewarned: These animals can be pests, having developed a taste for automobile wiring and radiator hoses.

The ascent to Mosquito Lake seemed easy for everyone else but strenuous for me. I begged off, ambling along the lower reaches of White Chief Canyon Trail. Actually, I didn’t mind being alone for a while as old memories tumbled through my mind. Coming around a turn, I encountered a doe nibbling at the edge of the trail. I paused; she sighed and stepped uphill.

At noon I was chagrined to find most of my loved ones’ lunches stashed in my backpack. Nobody had remembered this when we parted on the trail. There was nothing I could do but share my food with a group of hikers resting nearby.

I walked back to our campsite in time to indulge in an afternoon nap before the fishermen returned full of stories of the trout that had been caught and released, and of the lunch that got away. At dinner Jeff explained that trout had been introduced to the high lakes by miners during Mineral King’s 1870s silver rush and that the lakes had not required restocking since. Later we walked over to the ranger station for a campfire talk. As ranger Jeff Cox explained, the personality nuances of the Sierran black bears he has encountered, I wondered how the children in the audience would sleep that evening. Mineral King, I decided, has not changed. Here, a visitor still feels a privileged, if cautious, guest in the natural world.

On Sunday we lingered over breakfast. Camping together had given us time to complete the conversations we often don’t quite finish at family gatherings back home. The weekend had gotten us in closer touch not only with the natural world but also with one another. With six helpers and no whiners, breaking camp went quickly.

Farther down the mountain, I glanced longingly at the $3 showers offered at the cafe where we stopped for homemade pie and iced tea. The lack of a shower was the trip’s only shortcoming.

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Budget for Six

National park fee @$10/car: $20.00

Cold Springs Campground fee; 12.00

Four fishing licenses: 77.60

Groceries: 175.00

Gas: 100.00

Pie and tea: 10.00

FINAL TAB: $394.60

For information regarding weather conditions and park amenities, contact Sequoia/Kings Canyon National parks, Three Rivers, CA 93271; tel. (209) 565-3341, Internet https://www.nps.gov/seki.