The trip started at South Lake, going over Bishop Pass into the Dusy Basin. The trail over Bishop was mostly clear, with only small patches of snow. The first patch, near Timberline Tarns, looked like it had just been shoveled out by horse packers - there was a trench w/ 6 feet of snow on the uphill side, 3 feet on the downhill. Six days later the uphill side had 3 feet, so around 11,000 ft. it appears snow is melting at the rate of 1 foot every 2 days.
Most of the South Fork area is in summer:
with plenty of wildflowers:
Dusy Basin has a few more snow patches, but is still mostly clear and summer-like, with lots of mosquitoes:
with decent, though brisk, swimming in Lake 10742:
Going up towards Muir Pass is a different matter. Snow starts appearing around Lake 10800+. Lake 11280+ is thawing out, and Lake Helen is mostly frozen.
The original plan was to hike cross-country into the Ionian Basin, but when I saw the 2-3 foot suncups around Lake Helen I decided to save that for another year:
There was a well-worn path through the snow along the trail, but cross-country wasn't looking too appealing. Despite the well-worn path people were getting a bit lost, particularly between lakes 11280+ and Helen. Its not good to get on the wrong side of the river in here (follow where the topo says the trail is) because the snow bridges are collapsing:
So...I explored the Middle Fork Kings River from the top to Palisade Creek, climbed manzanita slopes for views, and basically had fun.
There was a 10 foot wall of snow along the trail between lakes 11280+ and Helen. With a melt rate of 6 inches per day (noted above), and days likely to get colder after a couple weeks, I'm thinking some of this snow won't be going away this year.
More pictures here: Picasaweb Albumn