South Lake To North Lake Trip Report Day 4

We decided that after camping at Evolution lake we would hike down the entire Evolution Valley and along to San Joquin River to end up at the trail junction with Piute Pass in one day. The mileage was about 12 miles.

Here is the view looking down on the evolution valley

Here is a picture of Colby Meadows. Isn't it beautiful. We would have loved to camp here except for one problem. The mosquitoes were terrible! They would have ruined all the fun!

We saw well over 30 waterfalls. I guess this one warranted a picture or the camera was out!

We had to cross the Evolution Creek without a bridge. It was a wet crossing. We took off our shoes and started across the 100 feet of river using our poles to brace us. The water was about knee deep. On the other side as I was putting my shoes on I heard something and looked up expecting to see a person walking up. Instead it was three deer. There was a mother deer, a young buck who was probably last year's child and a baby. They allowed us to watch them for quite awhile while they enjoyed eating the grass and plants by the river.
After crossing Evolution creek the river plunged down quite a ways through an amazing narrow gorge. We didn't get the best pictures of it because we were too busy trying to enjoy the view. This was my favorite part of the entire trip. That gorge is more amazing than anything we saw along the way. In some places the pools were so deep and the waterfalls were amazing. Cameron kept hiking off the trail to look but I guess he didn't get many pictures.

We hiked down the side of a cliff again as we dropped along with the creek. We could hear it but couldn't really see it very often. It was very hot and dry on the edge without very many trees except some very, very large Juniper trees. I didn't know they could grow so big.

After we were about 2/3 of the way down we met two men hiking up the trail. They thought they were half way up the steep part and we had to let them know that they were no way near that.

We we hit that way floor we could see up Goddard Canyon quite well. We both thought it looked beautiful and we want to go on another trip that goes up there.
Evolution Creek joined the San Joaquin River and it was quite a bit of river. It was amazing to think that this is only one of the forks of the river because there is at least another one up by Mammoth that we played in last fall. The trail was mostly along the river now which plunged though another gorge like area. It was very beautiful.


We found a very nice camp right next to the San Joaquin River. It had a fire ring with logs, granite slabs going out into the river and lots of shade. Cameron and I took a nice shower with heated water and then washed almost all our clothing. Here is the tree we found to dry our stuff on.

The aftermath of the quick bear attack- good thing for bear spray!

Or not.... Cameron came back from gathering firewood with this wound. He had been collecting firewood from the top of a dead tree when he slipped and fell about 8 feet. I am glad that this injury was all that happened to him.