Kings Canyon National Park Snowshoe To Panoramic Point

Dale Matson

Click On Photographs To Enlarge

Route Uploaded From Suunto Ambit II

The trip is almost 5 miles round trip with about 1,100’ of elevation gain, taking about 4 hours total time by snowshoe.

I included a piece on Panoramic Point in a Spring 2015 article on the Grant Grove area found here: http://midsierramusing.blogspot.com/2015/06/grant-grove-area-kings-canyon-national.html

This time of year, the only way to get to Panoramic Point is by skiing or snowshoeing there. The snow had melted down to pavement in many places making skiing impractical. I skied it years ago and the return trip from Panoramic Point is scary fast!

This time of year there is quite a bit of snow in the mountains and combined with cleaner air, it makes for a better view and photographs. The vista on the west side of the park provides a view across all of Kings Canyon Park to the eastern edge.

There are certain features identified on metal informational plaques at the vista where I have visited backpacking and thus they have great meaning. Mt. Clarence King is in the Rae Lakes area, North Palisade is a 14er near Dusy Basin, Mt. Gould and the Kearsarge Pinnacles are at Kearsarge Pass and Mt. Goddard is near Evolution Basin.

It is somewhat ironic that the park is only about 30 miles wide across from this spot yet it would take about 5 hours from Fresno CA to drive across via the seasonal highway 120 through Yosemite Park to the north or Tehachapi Pass to the south. Lacking any roads through it, Kings Canyon thankfully remains a backpacker’s park.

Hume Lake Christian Camp was spared the ravages of the 2015 “Rough Fire”. This fire was one of the largest forest fires in California history and did destroy a historic lodge between Cedar Grove and Hume Lake along Highway 180. As can be seen in the photograph of Hume Lake, the water level is quite low partly due to water being drawn from there to fight the fire.

The photographs were taken with a Sony A7R2, native Sony Zeiss 24-70mm f4 and adapted Sony A-Mount 70-300G.

 Trail Begins Near Muir Lodge 

 24mm

 70mm Hume Lake

 Mt Clarence King R of Center and Mt. Rixford L of Center

 Hume Lake 300mm

 Kearsarge Pinnacles Center and Mt Gould Left of Center

 Mt Goddard 300mm

200mm

 Mt Goddard 300mm Crop

 Mt Clarence King Far Left and Mt Rixford Right of Center

North Palisade At Center

300mm