Kaiser Peak Run

     With the 4th of July in the middle of the week this year, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to go for a run. I wanted to take advantage of my day off by running somewhere that I hadn't been before and Kaiser Peak was what I came up with. I was originally thinking of going towards the Yosemite area but I figured it was going to be way more crowded both on the roads and in the park. I had heard of people running to Kaiser Peak but I didn't know anything about the trail system or even where I should park my car. So I started looking on the internet and I actually found some info on a hiking website but even better I found a gps recorded route on the garmin connect site. On the garmin site there was a loop course that took a long route, about 16 miles, around the mountains to Kaiser Peak then back down, and with that I was set. My next task was to get a running partner but since I planned this, oh, the day prior it was a bit short notice for everyone but even without someone to run with I was undeterred.  

    I woke up at 4am got my running gear ready, ate some oatmeal, filled my water bladder and snagged some trail mix and gels. From my place I took 168 all the way up to Huntington Lake, there was little to almost no traffic on the whole route, the only thing that slowed me down were some deer crossing the road near China Peak. Once I got to the Huntington Lake area I made my second right onto upper Deer Creek rd drove all the way to the end where a sign read "TrailHead Parking for Hikers". From the small dirt parking area you walk up the road through past a horseback riding place and arrive at the trailhead. The trailhead  has a large map that shows both the loop trail (long way to Kaiser) and the direct trail, there are also many other places worth checking out marked on the map. So with a quick glance at the map I started my Garmin and took off up the trail thinking I had my route all figured out

After about 2.5 miles I already made a wrong turn, a left instead of a right which took me about 20 mins to figure out. Along the next 10.5 miles I went off the trail about 2 more times, one at a creek crossing where I kept going alongside it instead of crossing. The next was about 3 miles from the peak where there was tons of rock and I kept running for a few minutes before realizing the direction I was heading in led to a cliff. In spite of my wonderful navigation skills I managed to make it to the peak. At the peak there were absolutely amazing views in all directions, you truly have to see it for yourself. After getting a few pictures and eating a snack I continued on the 5 mile downhill portion completing the loop back to where I parked.
Considering this trail is only about 90 minutes from my door I'm planning on making a couple more trips before the summer months are gone. There are also a couple different directions I want to try for some long runs, maybe the 11 mile route to the peak and take that same route back or a reverse loop (where you get 5,000' of gain in 5 miles) and possibly a double loop. The double loop would be 32 miles with about 10,000' of gain, I might save that for my last trip before winter.