But, I am now committed to returning to the trail via Bishop Pass tomorrow morning. I'll be leaving my car at the Mammoth Mt ski area very early in the morning (before the free shuttle to town starts running) and bicycling down the hill to catch the 6:30 AM bus in town heading for Bishop, (I'll probably bring my bike on the bus and leave it at the Bishop KMart/Vons bikerack again, because there are no bike racks near the bus station in Mammoth Lakes - somewhat ironic since otherwise Mammoth Lakes seems very bike-oriented for Rental Bikes - lots of bike racks filled with bikes to rent in various places in town, and the town shuttles have bike trailers with room for dozens of bikes - but all the bikes are safely secured inside overnight.)
Then I'll try to hitch up to the Bishop Pass trail-head at South Lake (unless I manage to connect with a "trail angel" willing - for gas money etc - to give me a ride up to South Lake - I'm still trying to contact her though - she's the owner of a pack station near South Lake.) I've got my backpack and food and boots etc in a bearbox there at the trail-head. That afternoon I'll probably just hike to one of the lakes before the pass, since there's a 50% chance of thunderstorms tomorrow - I should avoid the exposure in the afternoon - the thunderstorm risk has been that way all week. Will jump the pass Saturday morning, and probably make it back down to the PCT/JMT before nightfall. It'll take me another 6 or so hiking days to get to Reds Meadow where I'll catch the shuttle bus back to my car. But I may take an extra day mid-way through this section, at the Vermillion Valley Resort where I could "restock" on snacks at the store and maybe take a shower and even do laundry although I doubt I'll bother to do laundry.
Hopefully the smoke from the "Aspen Fire" http://www.inciweb.org/incident/3552/ and other fires started by the lightning strikes just a few days ago in the Sequoia NF and Kings Canyon NP southwest of here won't totally obliterate my views of the peaks or vista's from the passes I'll be climbing over during this coming week. I've got some picts of a deep-orange sun behind thunderclouds from where I've been camping the last few days.
So, I've mainly been staying in the Mammoth Lakes area, because it's cooler at this higher elevation than in the Bishop area. I've done a bit of hiking in the Lakes Basin and in the Reds Meadow area - doing the PCT/JMT from Rainbow Falls to Agnew Meadows as a half-day-hike (so when I get to Reds Meadow a week from now, I can skip these few miles and resume hiking northward to Tuolumne Meadows from Agnew Meadows.) I started that half-day as a late-morning bus ride from the Mammoth Mt ski area to Devil's Postpile, from where I hiked around the Postpile area then south to Rainbow Falls then north along the JMT/PCT which traverses the ridge on the west side of the creek (the Middle Fork San Joaquin River) with nice views down onto the Postpile area. I was a bit rushed needing to make sure to make it to the bus stop at Agnew Meadows before the last bus around 7pm. I think I made the 2nd last bus shortly after 6pm. The bus was packed like a sardine can. I was the last passenger on, standing with a dog at my feet, one arm on a handle, the other braced on the ceilling, as the bus careened around the tight curves of the mt road. I just barely managed not to topple over onto the dog or the driver or into the front windshield.
I then had to dash back to my car and back to my "dispersed" camping site along a dirt road off of the Scenic Route north of town, before it got dark, because I had been having headlight problems. (I've been having headlight problems for the past two years now - have been swapping bulbs at about $20 per bulb on both sides randomly every few weeks it seems... the Auto Parts store people all say -ah yes, Subaru's seem to blow their headlamps all the time. The CHP officer that gave me a fixit ticket for that same issue just a few weeks ago (only three burnt-out bulbs ago now...) said the same thing. So, all you other Subaru owners out there - what's really going on???? Is it a big secret to keep up the resale value long enough to get rid of our lemons??? Is there a recall on that issue???? (OH, no need to inform me about not handling the glass bulb, though more info on whether & how to use dielectric paste would be welcome...) Anyhow, I did spend the next day fiddling around making the problem worse - the connector to the lamp had been brittle - partially broke, so I broke away the remaining plastic exposing just the connector, trying to find out whether the wire to that connector had an intermittent break. I decided to buy a replacement connector, but then needed a butt-end connector and the right tools... so I spent some time wandering around the local towns - Mammoth Lakes and Bishop, trying to find a Suabaru-savvy mechanic or at least one with the tools - couldn't find one willing to just splice in the new part... meanwhile now the high-beam on that side wouldn't work either. Finally realized that was a blown fuse, replaced that, and both low & high beams now work... have two spare low-beam bulbs for, um, next week when I have to go through the whole routine again?
What else have I been killing time on? Well, I bought two new books and read four - well, parts of four... first got most of the way through the way-too-verbose Mountain Weather book- I may try to sell that one back to a used book store in Bishop - the one next to the Galen Rowell Gallery. I usually hold on to my books, but this one was just too irritatingly chatty - written by a TV weatehr reporter - I need to get rid of it out of spite! Then I picked up the Eastern Sierra Natural History "text" (forget the exzct name - its in the car - I'm nit the library) which includes a plant section written by Ann Howald, alththough I've mainly read the Geology section and the "introductory" sections on Plant Communities. I've also just picked up the second of three parts Guide to the PCT by Jeffrey Schaffer - this one for Northern California, beginning from Tuolumne Meadows north. (I should be there in two more "hops".) This series includes good descriptions of both the Geology and the Plants that can be found along the trail. So, I've read the first section described in that 2nd part - from Tuolumne to Sonora Pass - this will be about 85 miles, the longest segment I think I've done without resupply. (There is the possibility for me to "bail" to the Twin Lakes area, but I'm not planning to do that.) The final book I've been reading is one I've had for quite a while - the Conifers of California. I've considered this a nice "picture book" but it's actually a very helpful ID guide to the major trees. I may actually now be able to more confidently name some of the Pines & Firs I'm photographing...
What I still haven't yet done much of, ironically, is review my picts. I still need my big laptop for that, and I've left that with Stephen (bacause last time I left Santa Rosa I forgot to leave it in my storage unit there.) What I have with me I'm really only barely able to offload my picts from my CF cards so I can reuse them - onto a 1GB hard drive. I'm able to look at very low-res images and I'm just spot-checking some of those to verify that I'm not totally screwing up. One think I've been able to discern this way is that the picts I'm taking with my fisheye are only marginally acceptable in terms of sharpness - somehow either my focus is off or DOF is worse than I would expect, or the lens just isn't up to the quality I would expect of a Canon lens- it is a "refurbished" lens - maybe I should have it "checked out" at any rate - I think I may go back to stitching together pano's from multiple shots with my trusty big 24-70.
My camera is also acting up on my at times (seems to depend of temperature or humidity or something...). The "selection" button (in the middle of the "big wheel" on the back that in manual mode controls the aperture) but which I need to "delete" a pic I'm reviewing or reformat the CF cards, sometimes refuses to react. I've taken a knife to the button while in a rage to try to make it work in the field, because I normally have been only formatting my cards "last minute" in order to maintain a "backup" as long as possible. This time, though I've formatted all my cards so I won't need to use that button in the field.
OK, so I've justified all this killing of time while listening to the weather forecasts that have been progressively upping the chance of thunderstorms in this area (although it's been "drying out" west of the Sierra's for the last few days, the crest and eastern Sierra has continued getting moisture from the south - though beyond this Saturday now it promises finally to dry out, reducing the thunderstorm chances. I'm probably being overly cautious, but din't like the idea of being a matchstick getting blamed for yet another lightning-caused fire... I mean, I'm not even bringing a stove, not bringing any food that needs cooking - bad enough to have to carry my food in a bear-canister - hm.. are there any faraday-cage canisters I could walk around in?
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