George Lake Day Hike (2009)

Click Here for George Lake 09 Picture Album
Click Here for George Lake 09 Video Album  

With winter nearing, I was eager to sneak in one more trip to the Sierras before we were "snowed out" until next spring. The destination of choice was George Lake, which is northeast of Huntington Lake in the Kaiser Wilderness. To access the trailhead, take 168 east of Fresno to Huntington Lake, then turn right onto Kaiser Road. Three to four miles up the road there will be a parking lot with a bathroom on the right hand side. The trail is on the opposite side (north) of the road.

My dad Jon, brother Tyler, girlfriend Megan, and myself left the trailhead around 8:30AM. The temperature was in the low thirties because we were now in the middle of November, but at least it kept the mosquitos away. The trail made a steady climb for the first two miles until we reached Potter Pass at approximately 9,000 feet, which offered extensive views of Huntington Lake to the south and Mt. Ritter to the north. Next the trail quickly descended for about half a mile down to a junction, veer left towards Twin Lakes.


After around 3.5 miles from the trailhead and an hour and twenty minutes later, we reached Lower Twin Lake, stopping briefly only for a few pictures. A few hundred yards further along the trail we reached a frozen pond, which provided ample entertainment as you can see in the videos. Only about five minutes beyond Lower Twin lies Upper Twin Lake, which is much larger in size and offers several campsites scattered around it. In the middle is a decent sized island, which I hear is fun to swim out to in the summer months (I will certainly be back next summer). Since we weren't sure how much time we had, we quickly pressed on around the northeast side of the lake and followed the trail west towards George Lake. After a relatively short uphill jaunt (now 4.8-5.0ish miles from trailhead) we finally arrived at George Lake, which was even more beautiful than I was expecting.

The eastern half of the lake was frozen clear as glass, and a subpeak of Kaiser peak towered over the western end, which at this time of year was littered with snow. We all sat down and ate our lunches, and then proceeded to see who could throw blocks of snow the furthest across the frozen lake (see videos). Now that we realized we had some time to spare, we descended back down to Upper Twin and this time did some boulder-hopping around the west side of the lake towards the inlet. We had heard that there were some caves in this area, but after some exploring we were unsuccessful. On our way out we passed three young women on the backside of Potter Pass, but other than that we had the trail to ourselves. Back at the car by 1:30PM, and we all enjoyed a nice nap while Dad volunteered to drive home!

Overall, a very reasonable day-hike with beautiful scenery and a wonderful day on the trail with my family. We all agreed that we will be back next summer for a weekend backpacking trip.