By Jaxon P.
This summer Troop 26 went to the Kaiser wilderness for the first time. We spent five days on a sierra trek inside of it and one night outside car camping. Since we had not been there before, we had a very loose itinerary, just a list of prospective campsites to check out. The first night we camped on the shore of Shaver Lake, made dinner, and went to bed. The next day we had a couple problems with altitude sickness, when we started out we were 8 but by midmorning we were down to 6. We hiked about six miles over Potter Pass to our first campsite, at Upper Twin Lake, a gorgeous smooth lake ringed with pines and plenty of fish within. Because we had found such a good campsite, we decided to stay the next day since we did not know how the other campsites were, and check out the area around us. The next morning we went on a day hike, and after a couple of navigational hiccups which involved hiking half a mile down the wrong trail, we determined the correct path and hiked back up to Potter Pass, but were forced swiftly back down because of impending rain and thunderstorm. Once it became sunny again we went swimming, fishing, and just chilled the rest of the day. On Day 4 we hiked to Idaho Lake, to check out a prospective campsite for Day 6 but discovered that the trail was very unmaintained and steep, it was covered in rocks, small and fallen trees, and bushes and would not be a very good option to hike on with heavy packs. In addition to that the campsite itself was very rocky terrain with little access to the lake. We headed back to camp and decided the next day to move camp to George Lake the next day. However, when we got there on Day 5 it began pouring rain, the only viable option was to sit it out inside our tents and hope we did not get struck by lightning. At one point it got so bad we needed to spread out, outside of our tents and get into lightning position, because lightning was less than a mile away. In fact, while we were standing outside lightning struck a nearby peak less than half a mile away. The next day was supposed to be our second to last day, but turned out to be our last as with all the heavy rains that would not let up the risk of flash flooding became high, and we would have had to sit in our tents for over 24 hours, something no one wanted to do. We decided to hike out and hiked about 7 miles out to the cars where we drove home. All in all a pretty good trip, fun with nice campsites.
