Arrow Peak 12,959′
Sierra Nevada
Total Time: 15:00
Distance: 30.5 miles
Elevation Gain: 10,700′
Crux: Class 3
Trailhead: Kings Canyon- Roads End. Full services
I hadn’t broken 30 miles in a day in some time. The last one that I could remember was Brahma Temple in the Grand Canyon in 2018, and I hadn’t been beyond the high 20s since. The Sierras were full of opportunities to break that benchmark, and I wanted to do it at least once before the end of summer. After scanning the maps, I decided on an objective out of Kings Canyon, which I hadn’t visited since my move to California. There were a number of summits that I could go after that neared the 30 mile mark. A chunk of them were near the Rae Lakes area, and since I had been through the region on my through hike of the JMT that summer, I wanted to target a different spot in the park. I settled on Arrow Peak to the northeast of Roads End. More often climbed from the east side over Taboose or Sawmill Pass, it was still quite doable out of Roads End utilizing trail for the first 10 miles of the approach followed by 5 miles of very steep cross country. I left home ungodly early, reaching Roads End shortly before sunrise. It was light enough to not require a headlamp, and I started east on the flat trail turning off after about 2 miles into the south fork of Paradise Valley. A bit under four miles from the start was Mist Falls, a popular day hike, and I planned to take my first break there for the morning. But as I climbed up into the canyon, I was swarmed by some of the most persistent flies I’ve ever encountered in the Sierra. They were flying in my mouth, eyes and nose, and I broke into a slight jog just to try and keep away from them. They were relentless, and I couldn’t even pause for more than a photo at the waterfall before being overrun by the flying beasts.
I charged past, not stopping in Lower Paradise Valley or even Middle Paradise Valley until I was either high enough or the morning warm enough for the flies to settle down. I checked my GPS- I had hiked over 8 miles in only a little over 2 hours. As annoying as they were, the flies had set me up nicely for the long day ahead. The valley opened up and I had a view of the Murro Blanco ahead, a deep trailless canyon with Arrow Peak somewhere off to the east.
I continued along entering Upper Paradise Valley, where I passed campers making their morning breakfast, 10 miles deep and certainly not expecting to see a dayhiker this early. As I approached the Murro Blanco, I eyed Arrow Creek as a cross country option above. Secor describes it as a class 3 route that is very brushy and “not recommended.” Rather, the few that hike up into this high basin usually take a class 3 route via Window Creek. This would be a bit more mileage and require a climb up and over the west ridge of Pyramid Peak, but reportedly less brushy. Looking up, it seemed like it wouldn’t be THAT bad… So I turned off into the Murro Blanco along a use trail along the South Fork of the Kings River, crossing it with the help of a downed logged and charging directly upslope. I entered a steep and dry streambed, and found surprisingly solid scrambling, the stream relatively brush free and dry this late in the summer. I followed this for about a quarter mile until I reached some steeper slabs protecting access to the upper reaches of the Arrow Creek basin. A trickle of water began here as several of the stream beds merged.
The little information Secor gave on this route was that the class 3 option was on the east side of the creek. I was standing on slabs on the west side, and although crossing the trickle of a stream would have been easy enough to do, I was intrigued by a ramp system leading up and to the left. From below, it certainly looked no harder than class 3, and there were some pretty well defined game trails leading up. I’ve learned to trust that animals are quite good at finding rather direct routes, so I decided to take a gamble and see where the game trail would lead. The faint route led west along the base of the slabs, slowly ascending through manzanita and pine duff. I encountered a steep 15′ step where I needed to use manzanita to pull myself up the ramp. This wound up being the crux of the entire route, although I didn’t know it at the time. I simply continued my ascending traverse along the base of the slabs to the west, up and over a few more class 3 obstacles until I crossed over into another wide dry gully. It was unclear if this gully cliffed out below so I built a small cairn to denote my exit spot for the possible return trip. Once I was in this wider gully, this route going seemed like more of a certainty, and I climbed past impressive Sequoia up to a small bench overlooking Arrow Creek.
It wasn’t immediately obvious how to get back down to the water, but I eventually made my way down a series of ledges and the only real bushwacking of the day to the creek. The watercourse wasn’t flowing strongly and I hiked along smooth slabs next to the water, likely not possible when the creek was running stronger. After pushing through an Aspen grove growing along and over the creek, I reached a relatively flatter area and stopped for a break to filter some water. Arrow Peak was somewhere along the ridgeline to my north with Pyramid and Window Peak to the east, and I needed to continue my ascent higher into the basin before cutting up.
It was tempting to go for the south ridge of Arrow directly, but Secor talked about a knife-like section along the south ridge that can be bypassed by class 3 ledges, which sounded like it would be a bit of a time sink. So I continued along the creek, passing through some higher sub alpine meadows and the first of several lakes.
An ancient moraine split the basin, and I climbed onto the rolling slabs, the summit of Arrow Peak now in view to the northwest. While I had planned to climb all the way to the pass east of Arrow Peak the follow the eastern ridge to the summit, it looked like I could follow a class 3 rib of rock more directly to the south ridgeline and follow this the remaining distance to the summit. From below, it looked like the south ridge was no harder than class 2, and that the knife edge section must be a bit lower from where I would intersect the south ridge. So after a little deliberation, I decided to try for the more direct line, hopping among boulders half buried in scree.
The larger rocks were fairly solid but most of the mountain was a shifting mess of loose rock, and it was tedious climbing to gain the southern ridgeline. But when I did, I was happy to find it was indeed class 2 with more easy scrambling around boulders to the high point…. or what I thought was the high point.
As I crested over the top of the ridge, I was disheartened to see not only was I not at the summit, but that the high point was nearly a mile away with the knife ridgeline between me and my goal.
While it was easy enough to drop down along the eastern side of the ridge, the scrambling was solid class 3 and loose in spots, making the going quite slow, particularly when I was nearly 15 miles into my day. The final mile of ridgeline scrambling took me about an hour to complete, and thoroughly exhausted, I pulled myself on to the summit rocks at around 2:30 PM, 8.5 hours into my day. Although a bit hazy from the nearby fires, the views were still outstanding, with a full view of Split Mountain and the Palisades to the north, Mount Pinchot to the east and Mount Clarence King and the Rae Lakes summits to the southeast.
I had a very late lunch and started down at 3 PM, one of the latest descent starts I’ve had in a long time. Rather than rescramble along the ridgeline, I dropped along the scree slopes to the southeast, quickly plunge stepping my way back down to the lakes in the upper basin. I reached the rock rib that I had ascended 40 minutes from the summit, taking me 2 hours for the ascent. While I definitely needed to make up some lost time from the ridgeline, I still had a long way to go. So I continued along, following the creek instead of climbing back on to the moraine hooking to the southwest to descend Arrow Creek. I had toyed with the idea of descending via Window Creek, but that really only made sense if I tagged Pyramid Peak as well, a laughable proposition at this point.
My goal was to make it back to the maintained trail by dark, not wanting to have to descend the game trail west of Arrow Creek by headlamp. So I did not break for water as I quickly descended the slabs along the creek, and cut back up to the bench to refind my descent gully. I definitely relied on my GPS to find my way back up, the route not being as evident on the descent. But the Sequoias in the gully assured me I was on track, and I boot skied down the loose slopes, spotting the cairn to indicate where I needed to cut back left. From there it was a fairly straightforward steep ramp back down, with the only real difficulty occuring where I had pulled myself up with manzanita on the way in, sliding down on my butt along a shallow crack on the way out. I had a hard time finding which dry stream bed I had ascended and had to bushwack a bit once beyond the slabs, but ultimately hit the south fork of the Kings River with about an hour to spare before dark. I popped out of the forest and startled a solo backpacker cleaning up his dinner, thinking I was a bear barreling through the forest. Passing through Upper Paradise Valley, it was admittedly a bit demoralizing to see all the backpackers settled in for bed, knowing I still had 10 miles to go.
I wanted to optimize the daylight I had remaining, so even though I was out of water, I hurried along to try and get through as much of those 10 miles as I could before I needed headlamp. Thirst won out when I hit Middle Paradise Valley, and I took a very short break to filter one liter of water and empty the pine needles from my shoes that had been dogging me for miles. I made it to Lower Paradise Valley, about 6 miles from the trailhead, when I finally needed to use my headlamp. I was grateful for the well maintained trail which I was able to half jog a good portion of the time. It was pitch black as I passed by Mist Falls and the final junction back to the car. As expected, the final flat stretch seemed to last forever, and I couldn’t resist the urge to keep checking my GPS to see just how much further I had to go in the darkness. I hit the car shortly before 10 PM, the entire day taking about 15 hours with 8.5 on the ascent, 30 minutes on the summit and 6 hours on the descent. I was overall pleased with my time considering a full hour was wasted on a single mile along the summit ridgeline, with my on trail MPH over 3 the entire day. I sadly had no victory food waiting for me at the car and the few amenities in the canyon closed for the night. So I hightailed it towards home, stopping in Sanger for some fast food and sugar to get me home shortly after midnight.