PCT: up and over THE two high Points along the trail

So as planned, I last hiked the section of trail from Cottonwood Pass, to Mt Whitney, which I summited as a day-trip from Guitar Lake with an improvised day pack (rain pants slung over my neck like a life preserver, legs stuffed with water, food, lenses, layers - a bit cumbersome & weird,) then on over Forester Pass which is the highest point on the trail itself, then exited via Kearsarge Pass to Onion Valley where I left my car.

The weather forecast had been a little worrisome when I originally planned to start on Friday June 21, with a low coming through with chance of snow... which I thought might result in the views being obscured by clouds just about when I would have been climbing Whitney.  Which is why I made the last minute decision to kill some time by swapping the location of my bicycle and car.

Turns out that I killed just a little too much time on Saturday at Onion Valley.  I was just sitting in my car reading Sharp & Glazner's "Geology Underfoot in ...Owens Valley" and Konigsmark's "Geologic Trips: Sierra Nevada", waiting for mid-afternoon before coasting downhill to Independence, so I wouldn't be bicycling the 15 miles along hwy 395 from Independence to Lone Pine during the hottest part of the day.  But the downhill coast was a bit slower because there were lots of 4-6 inch wide cracks across the pavement and a few cattle gratings which forced me to slow down practically to walking speed on my road bike lest I bend some spokes, and the 15 miles on 395 took a bit longer than anticipated due to a head wind. (The forecast had called for south winds to pick up significantly later in the evening, I should have paid more attention to that.)

Then I sat in the McDonalds in Lone Pine for too long writing that last email I sent to everyone (struggling to manually remember and enter all the bcc addresses...  since I apparently can't just "reply to all" on my Android email app as I can on Windows... one of those technology battles that gets me whining.)  (This new blog is my "workaround".)

So the sun was already setting by the time I got my bicycle secured at the Lone Pine Hostel.  I asked whether they had any beds left, but on a Saturday evening, they were booked solid.  Hmm.  Suddenly noticed all the other hotels in town had their no-vacancy signs lit up, and here I was, with just a day pack, with water and bicycle tools, my car way out of reach, my backpack and extra cooler of provisions up in Horseshoe Meadows.  Tried to hide my worry with a smile as I held my thumb out on the Whitney Portal Road.  I quickly got a ride to the intersection with Horseshoe Meadow Road, but then I waited there for about an hour, just a half dozen cars passed that way, one stopped just going to the campground a mile further up, I decided it would be better to stay at the intersection.  One driver going the other way stopped to comment that it was not a good time to hitch up the hill.

Dark now except for the full moon I finally decided to start walking back to town but on the uphill-bound side and continued to hold my thumb out. A cluster of cars came while I was in a narrow part of the road winding through the Alabama Hills.  One driver slowed down & tried to find a place to turn off, nearly causing an accident as the cars behind honked and passed.  They were headed to Whitney Portal, not Horseshoe Meadows.  A car going the other way stopped and I accepted the ride back to town.

I saw a small hotel near the hostel that didn't have a no vacancy sign lit but they were full. Walked arbitrarily north on 395 and found Budget Inn still had vacancy.Only one 3-bed suite left for $140.  I said I'd be willing to share with anyone else that came by but the clerk didn't sound too positive about that, although during that interaction two other parties did walk in, but they didn't want to share.  I took the room anyway.  I suppose I could have then gone back to the hostel and lurked there for people looking for a bed, might have had some takers for my spare beds, but I was tired, used to rising and sleeping with the sun.  Took a shower, checked my email, weather forecast, watched some TV news.

Next morning got a circuitous ride in the back of a flat bed truck from two women first delivering something in a neighborhood SW of town, then to the "real" ranch hidden below the DeLaCour dude ranch half way up Horseshoe Meadow Road, just below the winter closure gate.  It turned out they were "cowboys", having just driven a herd of cattle up the Olancha Pass trail a day before I returned to the PCT via that trailhead.  I had seen some of those cattle at that time, and heard an incredible din of bleating all night. They said that for the first few days the mothers and calves got very upset over the unfamiliar environs, getting separated and trying to find each other.

I waited at the dude ranch about an hour before a couple headed to Cottonwood Lakes gave me a ride the rest of the way up to the meadow.  They were headed to some kind of educational facility in that area.  While I swapped my daypack for my backpack, and swapped shoes, a few more people came by asking about the location of some kind of educational event going on there, and I was able to point them to the Cottonwood Lakes section of the road.   Then I was off up the trail.

Again, once I've processed my pictures I should be able to provide more detail about the hike itself. But in short, the scenery has been getting better an better, and I've been feeling better hiking in the cooler weather at higher elevation. I haven't felt any adverse affects from the altitude, um, except, for some reason I got an acute case of the sniffles on Whitney - and that wasn't from cold wind which sometimes brings that on. There was virtually no wind, shirt-sleeve temperatures, crystal clear vistas in all directions with just a few patchy clouds to add interest to the photos I was taking.  A crowd of people at the top of course, most from the Portal side.  Talked to someone with a tripod and video camera who was an AV tech with the Oregon State U,  filming for a PBS program on Sierra Natural History. He said he was also very keen on the vegetation as well as the geology.  I got his contact info.  He has a very strong russian/german accent, he said his parents emigrated into Russia for much the same reason my parents emigrated to America: they didn't think Germany would recover after the war.

I was mostly photographing with my fisheye, and took a bunch of video with that lens, with which it is easy to just walk around with the camera in the palm of one hand, panning and physically zooming closeup and back.  I think I have some fun results of that.

Next up beyond Whitney along the PCT comes Forester Pass, the highest point on the trail.  Actually it's not quite that straightforward...  The maps show a few streams crossing the trail before you get to the pass.  Not so evident at a glance is how much elevation one looses diving down into the canyons that contain each of those streams, then climbing back up the other sides.  Accompanying the elevation loss is a corresponding rise in temperature.  And now the weather was getting downright hot even at elevation, the unusually high high pressure system settling in.  And there actually is finally plenty of water around, (though sadly, fed by the remaining bits of glaciers melting in this heat) - I even got my shoes wet and my knees damp photographing rushes and mosses along boggy lakesides.  Oh, but also now, clouds of mosquitoes.  I suppose it was mostly the heat, but climbing out of some of those canyons felt like pushing through extra viscous, viscious mosquito soup!  Making it all worse is all the great plant-photo-ops along the way, so it was like: get up from the last muddyknees-opportunity, take a few steps, back down on my knees to focus in on another fascinating subject, swat the mosquitoes on the back of my hand, re-focus, wipe the mosquito off my eyelid, wiggle my shoulder and my my other wrist to shake off mosquitoes there, take a shot, refocus, swipe more mosquitoes on my wrist, refocus, take a shot, get up, try to walk away from the cloud of mosquitoes, repeat.   Yes, OK, I should have brought along the Deet.          

There were two other hikers and we seemed to be leapfrogging each other down and up the canyons and finally up and over the pass.  One had a video camera and talked about how hard it was to ration his use of it to a few minutes a day to avoid running out of battery.   The other hiker had a more typical small camera but seemed to know quite a bit about photo techniques and took lots of picts.  At some point they started referring to me as Ansel Adams, said that should be my trail name.

North of Whitney the PCT and John Muir Trail coincide, but of course the JMT hikers are usually starting in Yosemite and heading south ending at Whitney.  So we were meeting a lot of  southbound traffic.  The top of Forester Pass seemed to be a meeting place, with both sets of hikers setting down their packs to rest & snack, enjoy the scenery and the milestone event, take photographs, and find out from the others what lay ahead for them.

Just past Forester Pass the clouds began changing from interesting to threatening, and sure enough, soon there was lightning and thunder, and I began to look around for a place that, according to what I've read, should be within 50 feet of but not directly under a prominent tree or outcrop, not in a depression or overhang, etc, and settled on some low willows near a clump of small trees to sit out the afternoon storm.  It rained for about 40 minutes, and the lightning lasted a bit over an hour, then I walked on for another two hours of daylight hiking under clearing skies, down further into the Bubbs Creek valley, now even more humid due to the rain than that already humid wet-meadow environment would be.  I photographed blooming lilies, rein orchids. Quite a change from the sage-dominated dry scenery I had been getting used to.

Another weekend was beginning, and the Bubbs Creek watershed is accessible to weekend hikers not only from the east from Onion Valley over Kiersarge Pass, but also from the west from Kings Canyon from the Road's End trailhead.  From the west, Bubbs Creek is part of a popular 40 mile Rae lakes loop route (http://www.nps.gov/seki/planyourvisit/rae-lakes-loop.htm), and an unofficial shorter "Charlotte Lake" loop route (http://www.scaruffi.com/travel/charlott.html) and I met I think about a half dozen parties in the Vidette Meadow area doing variations of these loops.   As I would be departing and then returning to the trail from here as well, I began to consider returning from the west, and hoped I might have a chance to persuade some of my friends (dear readers...) to take advantage of this upcoming potential four-day Independence-day-weekend to take a backpacking trip with me for 27 miles 2/3rds of the way around this loop, and then I would just spin off northward while the others closed the loop westward 14 miles via Paradise Valley past Mist Falls.   Alas, I've been futzing around here now for too long... although, a daytrip just to Mist Falls or an overnighter around the Charlotte Lake loop might still be doable this weekend?

Next up for me was the climb out of that valley, first past a boggy series of ponds below Bullfrog lake and the Kearsarge lakes, then a serious climb overlooking these lakes to the pass.  I had hoped to be over the pass before noon to avoid getting caught in another thunderstorm, but found way to many pictures to take at the ponds, and mid afternoon, sure enough, more thunder & lightning and I was on a slightly exposed shoulder of the ridge overlooking the lakes, backdropped by the spectacularly jagged ridge called the Kearsarge Pinnacles.  I found myself some low pines to sit out the storm. But this time it fizzled out without a drop, and after about an hour I continued on over the pass under clearing skies.  I had expected to have to overnight at one of the lakes on the east side above Onion Valley, but they were crowded with weekend campers, and I decided to push on down to my car at Onion Valley, getting there just at dusk.

Another hiker was there looking for a ride down to Independence, and I offered him a ride.  But my car wouldn't start - dead battery!   No problem, the other hiker quickly rounded up another driver willing to give me a jump start - I had the cables.  Four people helped push my car out to get the batteries close enough, quickly started, disconnected, and off down the hill.  I was planning on getting a foot-long at the Subway's in town, but it was already closed. We instead went to the restaurant across the street and had a fine salad and salmon burger, admittedly for double the $6 Subway I intended.  I drove him to the hotel in town where he'd arranged to share a room, and I headed south to Lone Pine, where I would overnight back up at Horseshoe Meadows where I'd left my coolers and day-pack in bear boxes, then pick up my bike the next day and stay at the hostel that Sunday night.

With it getting so hot, I stayed all day up at Horseshoe Meadows, planning my next section, re-charging my camera batteries.  At sunset I finally made it down into the still-warm valley, started my laundry, retrieved my bicycle and booked a hostel bed.  Tried to check my email - no luck - for some reason I couldn't log into my email and it was not updating, message about a temporary problem, to try again later...

Next I used my little Asus EeePC to copy photos off my CF cards onto my Toshiba 1TB USB disk drive.  I suddenly realized I may have a serious problem - I may have overwritten a bunch of my photo files last time because the camera file names "roll over" after the 4-digit portion of the name gets to 9999, and I had been copying them all to the same folder on the Toshiba!   I might be able to recover these overwritten files but not with the little EeePC I was using nor the old Dell laptop with broken screen that I was trying to make-do just to extract the GPS tracklog off of the Holux M1000C.  I might be able to find a computer store in Bishop that could do a recovery.

I had other reasons for going to Bishop as well. Still had to stop at the CHP to take care of my headlamp fixit ticket, the hiker I had driven to town said he might make use of a ride to Bishop, and I wanted to scout out the South Lake area that was the trailhead for Bishop Pass to see whether it could be my next trail exit point.  Also, I might want to continue further north to check out the Reds Meadow area at Mammoth Lakes, that might be my next resupply point after that. (Beyond that would be Tuolumne Meadows.)

So Monday morning I did go to Bishop (although my email login was still not working, and so I could not check for messages to my Google phone# and could not call to see whether the hiker wanted to go to Bishop.  I got there before the CHP opened, so had a coffee at McDonalds and, voila!  My email works again. Called the hiker and he was already in Bishop.  I took care of the fixit ticket at the CHP, and they told me about a computer store in town. When I went there it was not yet open, but the neighboring business was a camera store and it was open.   I had lost my lens cap for my fisheye lens and so I asked if they had one, they didn't, but let me rummage through a "junk box" of lens caps and lens filter containers and I found something that would do the job.  With the computer store now open, I asked about recovering files on my disk, they said they would charge $85 and I would need something to copy the files onto and that it might not work.  I may have had a bit too much coffee by then after having no coffee while hiking, and said forget it I'll drive home & do it myself.

Next I checked out the Bishop Pass Trailhead at South Lake, looks very feasible - I can leave car there and have a long bicycle coast into town then take the bus south and hitch back up to Onion Valley to start my next hike.   I had been undecided about taking the long side trail over that tall pass vs taking extra food to make it further to the Vermillion Valley Resort place that most hikers use to resupply.  But with the camera battery charging constraints and track log capacity constraints that I have, I need to get back sooner.  Besides, the scenery looks like it will be worth the long side trip out & back in.

Next I tried checking out the Reds Meadow area.  It was very crowded that Monday mid-day with lots of families, and school groups it looked like, getting in line to catch the shuttle bus into that area.  Apparently one can leave a car there overnights, but I may look around for other alternatives.

Now committed to driving back to Santa Rosa, I continued on through Tioga Pass, stopping at the permit station at Tuolumne Meadows, learning about a few Yosemite-specific restrictions on camping locations etc in that area, but there is also overnight parking available, although I'm a bit leery about leaving stuff in my car there even if it's not food, seems very high probability to get bear-damaged or people-pillaged.

So, looks like I could continue doing the type of logistics I've been, and I definitely will do the section to Bishop Pass that way, planning to be back there this weekend, but I may also meditate further about switching to the more traditional PCT mode - see whether that would be simpler (except it would involve mailing discharged batteries to a person that would charge them for me, and that person mailing charged set to some other location.  I might need twice as many camera batteries than the 5 I have now, at about $70 per battery.

Anyway, I made it back to my storage unit to retrieve my laptop and disk drives by 7pm Monday evening, a half hr before the facility closed.   Then to McDonalds to call Mike to see if I could overnight at his place.  No answer.

Next, went to Best Buy and bought a 3TB "MyBook" drive (I had just filled up the previous drive last time I was here.)  Made myself "at home" at the EC to copy contents of Toshiba and newer contents of CF cards onto this new drive, and then rename/import them from there into Lightroom, meanwhile analyzing the writeover situation I thought I had.  Turns out the "missing" files I had previously copied to the other MyBook on my last visit here.  Nothing was lost!!!! Yay.   Learned something about the "DCF" standard that all camera manufacturers have been using since the 1990's.  I might elaborate on that a bit in a future post.

Tried calling Mike again, still no answer, called Bud, learned that Mike was in the hospital after a car accident.  I visited him in the hospital today.  Pretty bruised, multiple broken vertebrae, etc.  What a mess!   I've been ovenighting at Bud's, occupying the EC during the "day", like, til 2am.

Gosh, now it's Thursday July 4 already. I want to be back in E. Sierra this weekend.. (There is a field trip the local CNPS Bristlecone Chapter is offering in Big Pine this Saturday that I had wanted to attend.) Still have a lot to take care of first though... GPS track log stuff... overwhelming amt of picture-processing... laundry, food shopping...  planning...  and "Pump-Priming this blog with old email entries...   ...but now I need a few hrs of sleep.