Brewer's party left Kings Canyon via Kearsarge Pass where they encountered a group of prospectors led by Thomas Keough.: Although details on the Keough expedition are scarce, the miners had been prospecting on the North Fork of the Kings River and were returning to their homes in the Owens Valley, indicating that they must have crossed the Middle Fork - then considered a region impossible to access by white settlers - making them the first non-natives to do so. Around 1869, sheepherder Frank Dusy discovered and named the Middle Fork's Tehipite Valley, and later grazed his sheep there. Aside from such occasional uses, most of the high country remained little visited and mostly unexplored.