North Lake To Lamarck Col With Overnight At Upper Lamarck Lake

North Lake To Lamarck Col With Overnight At Upper Lamarck Lake

Dale Matson

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I got fired up watching John Ski’s video of he and his partner doing the Lamarck Col in a single autumn push. I forgot where they said during the video, “This is harder than Mt. Whitney or Mt. Langley.” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8sZL4rUVJM&t=442s

My older son Ben and I drove from Fresno to Bishop (after 4pm) via Yosemite. We didn’t have a 3day entry pass. We bedded down in Bishop, had our morning meal and headed to North Lake. Unfortunately, the trail head for Lamarck Lakes is about a mile from the parking at North Lake. We were on the trail a little after 7am. We had over 1,800’ of ascent over the 3.75 miles to Upper Lamarck Lake. Ben wanted to go all the way to Lamarck Col after we set up camp on the other side of the creek. There are some nice camp sites near the beginning of the Col portion of the hike. 

I’ll be age 78 this month and there was no way I was ready to continue. 

The weather held and we had a great start and hiked with day packs (and cameras) the 3 miles to Lamarck Col. My Garmin Fenix had us at 6 miles round trip from our campsite with 2,468’ of ascent. It was about 7 hours round trip. This was not a “smooth” trail and not falling was a priority.

I would say that the view from the crest (My son found the sign to Kings Canyon but he was way ahead of me) was as splendid as all of the videos I have seen. It is probably the single biggest collection of mountains I have ever seen. There were lots of “evolution” type names. It is in the top 5 of my Sierra Views and every bit worth the suffering I endured. I also enjoyed the many views of Mt. Humphrey in Humphrey's Basin. It is almost a 14er. The Piute Crags and Mt. Emerson are also in view much of the time. I used my Sony A7C with the 16-35mm f4 lens and the Sony 85mm 1.8 lens.

The post script on this was when we got back to camp, Ben said he had to be at work the next day. Yikes! So, we broke camp and I hiked 2.58 miles to the campground. Ben was merciful and added my tent to his pack. I gave Ben my keys and asked him to bring the truck to the campground from the North Lake Parking area which saved me one more grueling mile.We drove through Yosemite at night and arrived home about 11pm.