Hiking King Peak in King Range Conservation Area

King Peak is the tallest mountain in the King Mountain Range.  At 4091 feet /1247 meters, it isn’t terribly tall.  But its got near enough to 3,000 feet of prominence (height from the ground the mountain is on to the top of the mountain), which makes it tall enough for me.

We took the Lightning Trail to the summit, but there are 2 other routes that you can take.  Probably more if you’re backpacking.  If you are doing it as a day hike I recommend Lightning.  The trail is well marked and fun.  After reaching the summit we took one of the alternative routes, King Crest North, for a couple of miles and found the going discouragingly slow.  Lots of fallen trees meant it was hard to maintain a stride.

Making amazing time – but not by choice

So, for those of you paying attention to dates and such, you may notice that:

a) I’m posting less often

and

b) The posts mostly pertain to things that happened a couple of weeks ago.

Well, there are a couple reasons for that:

1) We didn’t do a lot of hiking in California (not dog friendly)

2) We didn’t stay still a lot, so lots of miles covered but not as much time to make an impression somewhere

3) Lots of miles covered means a lot of time setting up and breaking down camp, therefore not lots of time to write.

So, here’s the quick recap:

King Range National Conservation Area: Or California’s best kept secret

I don’t know how to say this politely.  So, I’ll say it as least impolitely as I can:

I do not care for California.  It is the least dog friendly state I’ve been to on this trip, or any trip.  It is the state with the most parks that include rules to the effect of “no having fun.”

But it has at least 4 things I do like:

1) The Mojave Desert National Preserve

2) Really big trees

3) Highway 1, aka Pacific Coast Highway, aka driving nirvana

4) King Range National Conservation Area.

And it is the last two points that this post is dedicated to.

Mojave Desert National Preserve

Last week we were staying in the Mojave Desert National Preserve, which as you probably can determine from the name is located within the Mojave Desert.  What this doesn’t really tell you is sheer scale of the Mojave Desert.  It is large.  And I’m not talking Hoover dam large (which I found depressingly small…perhaps it was their unfriendly stance towards four-legged friends that I found small), or Lake Mead large, or Rhode Island Large.  I’m talking bigger than the state of Pennsylvania.

The desert is the bit shaded in green. Because…you know, deserts are green.