April 18th, 2010: Day 3, The Low Sierras

Today we made our big push for the Kaweah Basin, where we would set up our base camp for three nights. Before we could go up, we had to go down below 9.000', where we discovered a great lack of snow and abundance of manzanitas. Here Steve is pointing out the Kern-Kaweah River, which we will need to find a snow bridge across.

The Kern-Kaweah proved to be fierce and the high flow had broken away all the snow bridges. This one would have to be crossed on foot. Bare foot wading for Yu and I, though Steve was able to keep his boots on and hop-scotch from rock to rock. Estimated water temperature: 32.4 degrees F.

Over the river, up and out of the woods, to the Kaweah Basin we went. We would have no shortage of snow from this point forward.

Three days from the trailhead we were very excited to be at our base camp for the next three days, and even more excited about our clear views of the Kaweah Peaks Range. The moon helped paint the snow as the stars continued to fly through space.

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