AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Packsaddle Trail (route number 33E34) threads through the Sequoia National Forest along the Upper Kern River, about 15–16 miles north of Kernville on California's scenic Mountain Highway 99. Maintained by the Kern River Ranger District, the trail climbs out of the hot river canyon, drops to a flowing creek dotted with bedrock water slides, and finishes at a cool limestone cavern—Packsaddle Cave—that makes the whole uphill effort worthwhile.↗↗
Most hikers use the Packsaddle-Cave route as an out-and-back day hike of roughly five miles round trip, gaining around 1,600 to 2,000 feet. The official forest trail itself is 2.3 miles from Fairview to the Rincon Trail, but the popular destination—the cave—sits a short climb above the creek crossing. With a 4.6 rating from reviewers, it is one of the more rewarding hikes in this corner of the forest.↗↗↗
Climbing Out of the Kern Canyon
From the signed trailhead on the east side of Highway 99, the trail leaves the Kern River behind and begins a long, exposed climb through open high-desert chaparral. The first stretch is the hardest: a steady, sometimes gravelly ascent through deer brush, manzanita, live oak, gray pine and sagebrush that gains roughly 900 feet to the saddle. It can be hot and unforgiving, but the reward is a widening panorama of rugged peaks and a long ribbon of the river below, with the snow-streaked Greenhorn Mountains rising across the canyon in spring.
