Trail Highlights:
If you are in shape, you could hike this entire circuit in one day without overexerting yourself. However, it is so scenic that three days are recommended-sufficient time to visit Lady, Chittenden, Staniford, and Rainbow lakes. Visiting all four of these desirable lakes lengthens your route to 21.1 miles and changes its classification to a 5E, moderate 3-day hike.

Description:
From the second trailhead at the end of Road 5S05, you start west up the Fernandez trail, passing through a typical mid-elevation Sierran forest: white fir, Jeffrey pine, lodgepole pine, and scrubby huckleberry oak. After 1/3 mile of gentle ascent across morainal slopes, you reach the lower end of a small meadow and meet a junction at its west side. From it a trail meanders almost a mile to the vicinity of the first trailhead before climbing up to Norris Lake and the Jackass Lakes. Beyond the junction your trail's gradient becomes a moderate one, and red firs quickly begin to replace white firs. The forest temporarily yields to brush-huckleberry oak, chinquapin, greenleaf manzanita, and snow bush-as we struggle up short, steep switchbacks below a small, exfoliating "dome." Now entering Ansel Adams Wilderness, we have a steady 1/2-mile pull up to a near-crest junction with a steep, mile-long trail from the first trailhead. If you come up this short, exhausting route, remember this junction, for if it is not properly signed it can be easy to miss as you later descend the Fernandez trail.

We continue a moderate ascent up the Fernandez trail for only a few more minutes, then reach a crest junction. If you are following Hike 98 and are in a hurry, you can keep right, staying on the Fernandez trail. Although this lakeless route bypasses the best part of Hike 97, it will save you 2.4 miles in your ascent to Fernandez Creek.

Heading west toward peaks and lakes, we veer left and start up the Lillian Loop trail. This trail's first 2 miles are generally easy. Conifers shade your way first past a waist-deep pond, on your right, then later past two often wet, moraine-dammed meadows-both mosquito havens. Then the trail climbs to a bedrock notch in a granitic crest. On the crest you arc around a stagnant pond, then make a short descent to a junction above Madera Creek. If you plan to camp at very popular Vandeberg Lake, you could leave the trail here and descend southwest to find some campsites along its east shore.

From the junction the right branch-for horses-descends north to Madera Creek, then circles counterclockwise 1/3 mile to rejoin the left branch above the lake's west shore. We take the left branch, curving above good-to-excellent campsites along the lake's north shore. From them, steep, granitic Peak 9852, on Madera Peak's northeast ridge, is reflected in the lake's placid early morning waters.

Where the two trail branches of the loop trail reunite, you start a 250-yard climb up bedrock to a trail junction at the edge of a lodgepole flat. Here a spur trail takes off south and climbs gently to moderately up to a large campsite on the north shore of granite-rimmed Lady Lake. On the east-shore moraine that juts into the lake, you'll find an even better campsite, though not quite as large. This lake's irregular form, speckled with several boulder islands, makes it a particularly attractive lake to camp at or to visit, especially since it is backdropped by hulking, metamorphic Madera Peak. Like all the lakes you might visit along this hike, Lady Lake has trout. Because it is shallow, it is a good lake for swimming from late July through mid-August.

Beyond the Lady Lake trail junction your Lillian Loop trail crosses the lodgepole flat, then climbs a couple of hundred feet up fairly open granitic slabs. On them you can stop and appreciate the skyline panorama from the Minarets south to the Mt. Goddard area in Kings Canyon National Park. During past glaciations virtually all of this panorama except for high crests and mountain peaks was under ice.

Descending northwest from a ridge on a moderate-to-steep gradient, you reach, in 1¼4 mile, an easily missed junction, if it is not well-signed. Here, close to a Staniford Lakes creek, one can start a mile-long climb up to cliffbound Chittenden Lake. (If you miss this junction, then you probably wouldn't be able to follow the obscure trail to that lake anyway.) Where this trail curves from northwest to southwest at the lower end of a small, wet meadow, you could follow an equally obscure trail 1/4 mile northwest up to extremely shallow Shirley Lake, which is not worth most hikers' efforts.

The last slabby trail section to Chittenden Lake is so steep that equestrians rarely visit it. Chittenden may be the most beautiful of all the lakes in this part of Ansel Adams Wilderness, though Lady and Rainbow lakes offer competition. Although Chittenden's water usually does not rise above the low 60s, the lake's three bedrock islands will certainly tempt some swimmers. If there are more than two backpackers in your group, don't plan to camp at this fairly deep lake, for flat space is really at a premium.

On the Lillian Loop trail, you go north only about 200 yards past the Chittenden Lake trail junction before you see a Staniford lake. A waist-deep, grass-lined lakelet, this water body, like Shirley Lake, is best avoided. After a similar distance you'll come to a trailside pond atop a broad granitic crest. In this vicinity you can leave the trail, and on your third optional excursion descend southeast briefly cross-country on low-angle slabs to the largest of the Staniford Lakes. This is certainly the best lake to swim in, and if any sizable lake along this route will warm up to the low 70s in early August, it will be this one. The great bulk of the lake is less than 5 feet deep, its only deep spot being at a diving area along the west shore.

More ponds are seen along the northbound Lillian Loop trail before it dips into a usually dry gully. It then diagonals up along a ridge with many glacier-polished slabs. You soon cross the ridge, then quickly descend to Lillian Lake's outlet creek, which drains southeast into Shirley Creek. A short walk upstream ends at the lake's low dam and an adjacent, lodgepole-shaded area that once comprised the largest campsite in this part of the wilderness. Since camping is prohibited within 400 feet of the northeast shore, be inventive and try elsewhere. Being the largest and deepest lake you'll see along this hike, Lillian Lake is also the coldest-not good for swimming. However, its large population of trout does attract anglers.

With our basic hike now half over, we leave the lake's outlet and descend a mile east past lodgepoles, hemlocks, western white pines, and red firs down to a two-branched creek with easy fords. The Lillian Loop trail ends in 1/4 mile, after a short, stiff climb over a gravelly knoll. Here, at a junction on a fairly open slope, we rejoin the Fernandez trail. Hike 98 describes this trail from this point upward.

Your fourth optional side trip ascends this trail one mile northwest up to a junction, from which the Rainbow Lake trail first wanders 3/4 mile northwest to that prized lake. This trail may become vague on bedrock slabs where it bends from southwest to northwest, and unsuspecting hikers may continue southwest down toward Lillian Lake, 400 feet below, before realizing their error. The correct route ends at a large, former camp 50 yards above Rainbow Lake. Today, camping is prohibited within 1/4 mile of the lakeshore. One can cross this multilobed lake by swimming from island to island.

From the Lillian Loop-Fernandez trails junction, those descending Hike 100 join us as we descend 1/3 mile east on the Fernandez trail to a linear gully, follow it a bit, then drift over to the crest of a moraine. After its end you soon engage a few short switchbacks near some junipers, and here get a good view of much of your basin's landscape.

Below the switchbacks the Fernandez trail descends 1/2 mile to a trail junction. If you were to follow the trail north 70 yards to a crest saddle, you would see that it forks into the Post Creek trail (left) and the Timber Creek trail (right). The Post creek trail ends after a 1.9-mile climb to a packer camp on the West Fork of Granite Creek. Just below this spot is th

Chapter:
12

Grade:
3D, easy 3-day hike

More info on the trail

Directions:
Follow the Hike 94 trailhead description 20 miles up Forest Route 7 to the junction with Road 5S04, opposite Globe Rock. Continue along your road, an obvious route, 7.5 miles to a junction with Road 5S86. This junction is 0.4 mile past the Bowler Group Camp entrance and 100 yards before Forest Route 7 crosses Ethelfreda Creek. Your first of three trailheads lies at a road's end parking area above Norris Creek, 1.9 miles up this road. Be aware that there may be a rough creekbed crossing about 1/2 mile before the parking area. This trailhead provides the shortest mileage for any hike along the Lillian Loop trail. It is also the start of a trail to Norris Lake and the Jackass Lakes, the latter being worthy goals. F6.