[originally emailed 10am 15June2013 from my N1 phone, goofey autospellcheckwordswaps corrected]
So a lot of spinning wheels these last few days.
I made it through Olancha Pass back to my car by 10am of I guess the third day after leaving Kennedy Meadows, so just one full day of hiking in fine cooler weather than the hot days preceding.
Drove to Lone Pine hostel to shower, then tried downloading my tracklog from that new Holox M1000C GPS logger that gave me grief before, using my klunky old laptop with broken screen, (which I have to hook up to a small external monitor to use...) only to find out that all these days from Walker Pass on, the device has been blinking happily but not logging anything: I had changed the settings to log every two meters and stop when storage was full, which was an improvement over my initial default settings of one Hz frequency and overwrite old data when full. I guess I assumed it would somehow let me know when it was full by stopping its happy blinking or something. Anyhow, my big mistake was to not explicitly clear the log from it's memory after I had downloaded last time. This is a big setback! Now I have no location info for over a week's worth of hiking!
Bummed, I decided too go home. I thought I could make it to my storage unit to fetch my real laptop before it closed at 7:30 that evening. I called Mike in Santa Rosa to confirmed I could overnight there (paying him $30 for two nights.)
Except I then decided to stop at the Manzanar historical site just north of Lone Pine and spent over an hr there. So I didn't get to Santa Rosa til 9:30pm.
Next day I fetched my laptop and backed up my picts - completely filling my 4TB drive - 2.5 yrs of picts. I'll have to buy yet another drive next time I'm back.
Then I tried printing out maps (from Halfmile's PCT trail maps that most all hikers are using.) I had bought a new print cartridge and ream of paper for Mikes printer earlier for this purpose, but never got around to printing them out. Now I found it would take forever to print even a few pages (it would print one half inch strip of map every few minutes. After trying to troubleshoot the problem all day I just went to Kinko's and printed them out in a few minutes in exchange for 60cents per pg.
Managed to get myself sorted out by late afternoon two days ago now, drove till about midnight overnighting in my car in a turnout somewhere on hwy 89, enjoyed the early morning drive over Monitor Pass, got stopped by a CHP for a burnt out headlamp, but still made it to Bishop just as Galen Rowell's Mountain Light photo gallery opened. Spent an hr there, then to a sporting goods store to buy my bear canister. (Oh, about the other canister, that I had ordered back in Agua Dulce to arrive "too late" at Kennedy Meadows, that I was trying to get the company to redirect to Lone Pine? Well, we ended up cancelling that order. Simpler, less expensive.)
So, I then drove up to Onion Valley (above Independence, CA) which is where I plan to exit the trail via Kearsarge Pass after hiking the section that passes by Mt Whitney (which I do plan to climb.) I left my bicycle with the campground host there, and overnighted there.
This morning I drove to Lone Pine to do some errands (including buying a new headlamp - forgot to do that in Bishop while I was passing through there yesterday, now will need to remember next time I'm in Bishop to show the CHP there that it's fixed.)
So, now I plan to drive up to Horseshoe Meadow, the trailhead to Cottonwood Pass, which is just south of Mt Whitney. Horseshow Meadow is going to be a resupply point for me, since I will be starting my hike at Olancha Pass where I left the trail a few days ago. I plan to leave food for myself in one of the many bear boxes in the parking lots at the trailheads there.
I may also decide to take an overnight hike there, from the TrailPass trlhead along a section of PCT and back out via the Cottonwood trlhead. This way I can skip that section doing my resupply via TrailPass and going on via Cottonwood Trl.
That all assumes. I won't have to charge my camera batteries. To do that I'll have to hitch to Lone Pine & probably overnight at the hostel here.
So after setting up my resupply etc. at Cottonwood, I'll drive back to Olancha Pass where I'll leave my car and resume my hike. I'll probably start hiking late afternoon when that slope will be shaded, overnight midway up to the PCT - 3500ft climb I think. Should be at my resupply pt in 2 or 3 more days, then will allow about 5 or 6 days for the Mt Whitney segment.
Then to unwind: bicycle down to catch the bus along 395 to just past Olancha, walk the 4 miles along Sage Flats Rd back to my car at the Olancha Pass Trailhead, then retrieve stuff left at the other two trailheads.
Then process picts etc before going on.
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