If your hiking checklist includes: a relatively easy day hike, avoidance of Yosemite Valley-like crowds, plenty of highlights or goals, wildflowers, and/or a good backpacking area for beginners, Dinkey Lakes Wilderness is a nice place to consider. Getting there might be a challenge. From Southern California, the E.T.A. is 6 – 7 hours. If you want to do a day hike in DLW, the drive to a trailhead can be troublesome. IMHO, the best day hike in these parts is the Dinkey Lakes Trail from the Wildflower trailhead. From the main road, this trailhead is twelve miles away via a rough and rocky road. You need an AWD/4WD/SUV with good clearance. This road is truly gnarly so come prepared. One of my passengers went airborne a few times and hit her head on the car ceiling after one especially rough broken asphalt part. If you’ve overestimated your vehicle and can’t take the road conditions any longer, there’s an interchange 2.2 miles from the trailhead that has some room for parking. Once you’ve made it to the parking lot, the rest of the experience is easy. The elevation climb from the start to the first lake is less than 1000 feet. The trail is fairly flat. It’s a seven mile loop trail that has four sub-alpine lakes along the path. If you want to put in more time there’s spurs to explore, 10k peaks to walk up, conservatively maybe six more lakes or reservoirs to check out and nice places to set up camp. I think there’s fifteen permits available daily for overnight stays. There were also plenty of wildflowers and water… creeks, falls, lakes along the trail.
