Rae Lakes
— the lakes the granite holds in its hand.
Not only on a wall.
“A chain of glacial lakes at 10,500 feet in the upper Sierra, in the northern reach of Kings Canyon National Park. Painted Lady, the striped granite peak above, gives the basin its frame; Glen Pass closes it off on the north. The Rae Lakes Loop runs about 41 miles from Roads End in Cedar Grove, climbing Bubbs Creek, crossing the pass, and dropping down Woods Creek and Paradise Valley. Most parties take four to six days. The lakes hold trout, the marmots are unbothered, and the John Muir Trail runs right through the meadow.
Rae Lakes, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Rae Lakes lie at roughly 10,540 feet in the upper Kings River drainage of Kings Canyon National Park, in the southern Sierra Nevada. Three main basins make up the chain: Upper, Middle, and Lower Rae, fed by snowmelt from the cirques on either side of Glen Pass. The Rae Lakes Loop is a 41-mile circuit from Roads End in Cedar Grove, climbing the South Fork Kings River through Paradise Valley, joining the John Muir Trail and Pacific Crest Trail at Woods Creek, and crossing Glen Pass at 11,978 feet before descending Bubbs Creek. Wilderness permits are required and quotas apply from late May through late September.
The basins were carved during the last glaciation and now hold clear, cold tarns coloured by the sky and the surrounding granite. Painted Lady, the 12,126-foot peak above, reflects in the Upper Lake on calm mornings, when the surface goes still enough to mirror its bands of pale and dark rock. Outlet streams drop through subalpine meadow and into the South Fork Kings River, which runs the length of Paradise Valley and out at Roads End. Rainbow and brook trout hold in the deeper pockets. The Park Service prohibits soap of any kind in the lakes and asks for camping at least one hundred feet back from the water.
The Rae basin holds a quiet that is rare in the Sierra. Snow still drifts in patches into July at this altitude; the trail thins of dayhikers above Vidette Meadow and almost everyone moving through is on a multi-day wilderness permit. Marmots whistle from the boulder fields on either side of the pass. The wind off Glen Pass falls into the cirque after sunset, and the lakes glass over by the time the alpenglow fades from Painted Lady. The ranger station at Charlotte Lake, about three miles west, is the closest staffed point in the high country, kept open through the short summer season.