PCT: Back in Bishop

So I'm back in Bishop after getting off the trail earlier this afternoon, fetching stuff I left at Onion Valley where I started hiking last Friday, taking a shower and doing my laundry in Big Pine, fetching my bicycle in Bishop, shopping at the Von's there, (including a whole cooked chicken that I wolfed down on the spot along with a package of cherry tomatoes, some yogurt, and some grapes, and now at Carl's Jr I'm having a milk shake and starting to copy my picts to my backup drive.  I probably won't finish that tonight because i'ts way past my normal bedtime these days, and I want to sleep.

Sleep will be along Buttermilk Road, the same place I overnighted with my bicycle last Thursday night after coasting half-way down the road from the Bishop Pass trailhead where I had left my car, before catching the bus Friday morning. Buttermilk Rd had been recommended by someone at the Visitor Info Center in Bishop, it's the nearest public land to downtown Bishop and enroute to the pass.  This time it'll be with my car though.

The "commute" from Bishop to Independence went well.  It turned out that I arrived at the bus stop at the Vons shopping center in time to catch an earlier bus (7am) whose existence I wasn't aware of, a more local route between Mammoth Lakes to only part way down the Owens Valley.  Got to Independence by 8am and waited about an hour with very low traffic on the road to Onion Valley. Finally got a ride from a young avid hiker very familiar with that area and, when he noticed I was reading a book on "Mountain Weather", I got an ear-full of practical tips such as how to estimate hrs before local sunset by counting outstretched-hand-widths between the sun and the ridgetop.

For the first few days I seemed to be dragging a bit, as I had feared, due to my week-off back at sea level and worse, my sitting around the whole time staying up till wee hrs in the morning getting just a few hrs of sleep each night, to get this blog "up and running". This double-whammy "de-acclimated" me to the altitude, and de-conditioned me to that level of exercise.  By the final few days, though, I was feeling much more up to speed (or actually what I would call my "productivity" as measured as the product of picts per minute and meters per minute - note that often the first ratio was larger than the second.)   

Lots of incredible scenery to photograph, of course, and the bloom seemed to be at it's peak, although it was evident that this is a very dry year.  Normally-boggy areas were so dry I could kneel without even getting my knees wet!  Virtually no snow on the trail, about the only snow I've seen were bits of glacier-ice - and I wonder whether any of these will remain by the end of this year.  

This section of trail was essentially a series of V-shaped climbs to a pass, then down to a major stream crossing, then up to the next pass.  The slope of the trail was constant at it's maximum specified standard, just traversing the flank of the ridge or folding into switchbacks as needed.  There were a few exceptions when crossing a flat plateau, usually dotted with a series of lakes and bogs.  These areas of course slowed me down even more due to my frequent stops to kneel down to capture the plants while trying to also include the background context.  Hopefully one of these months I'll have a chance to share some of these...

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So I guess this place is now closed, I'll continue tomorrow...