Mineral King with Katia

Mineral King is a remote glacial valley in the southern reaches of Sequoia National Park, reached by a long, narrow, switchbacking road. At about 7,800 feet it is ringed by granite peaks and alpine lakes, with meadows, marmots, and trailheads climbing to high passes.

Backpacked the shortened Mineral King loop over three days with Katia, before the kids. This and the Yosemite overnight were the only nights out where I carried my own pack — on the Lares trek in Peru the donkeys carried everything.

(Pre-digital era — no photos survive in the cloud archive. 2010 is right; the exact day isn't recorded.)

Silver drew a boomtown of 3,000 people to Mineral King in the 1870s; avalanches emptied it within a decade. A century later, a Sierra Club campaign defeated a Walt Disney ski-resort plan for the valley before it was folded into Sequoia National Park in 1978.