After I left my backpack in the bear box at the Bishop Pass trailhead at South Lake this morning, I stopped at the Parchers resort along the road just below South Lake to take a shower and to see whether I could get some info about the "trail Angel" contact named Ruby Allen that I vaguely remembered being told by the person at the Bishop Visitor Center worked there. The guy at the little store didn't know about her, but mentioned there was a pack station just next door... and did mention that they sometimes offer shuttle service to/from various places nearby ...for about $60.
So I inquired at the Pack Station and they indeed did know her - the owner, apparently, and they did take my info, as the phone number I was given was for the Pack Station.
So I just noticed a phone msg a half hr ago from a Lindsey Allen who sounded like the person I talked to there, informing me that they do indeed offer a shuttle service to South Lake for $60.
OK, so I guess $60 beats the uncertainty of hitching... and the person at the visitor center did say the "trail angel" did expect a fee... and I did indicate I was willing to pay gas money and such, and evidently $60 seems to be the going rate...
I guess the road up to South Lake is a bit steep (though when I bicycled down it the other week it actually was not as steep as the road from Onion Valley was, or the road from Walker Pass. But it is a long road.
I'm probably committed to accepting the ride, at this point.
Now to move from this Library which is about to close to Carl's Jr where I'll try calling her back, hopefully 6:30pm not too late to reach her at the pack station... I guess otherwise I'll try again tomorrow morning after I get to Bishop.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
PCT: FINALLY about to hit the trail again after incredibly long delay...
Yes well... I'm spending more time off the trail than on... At the moment in the Mammoth Lakes library while there's a thunderstorm raining outside.
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?
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?
Thursday, July 18, 2013
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...
....
So I guess this place is now closed, I'll continue tomorrow...
Thursday, July 11, 2013
PCT: Scurrying about to resume my hike - catch the bus tomorrow AM in Bishop
It's been a long series of distractions and frustrations off the trail, but now it's a matter of getting myself situated to catch the 8AM bus from Bishop after leaving my car at the Bishop Pass trailhead ASAP this afternoon and trying to bicycle most of the way back town the hill ASAP soon thereafter this afternoon (hope to dodge any of the thunderstorms threatening - according to forecasts and just looking at the sky...)
I've found out about some open space near town (along Buttermilk Rd which is off of the rd I'm bicycling down) that I plan to overnight at tonight . Then tomorrow morning cycle the rest of the way into town, parking my bike in the rack by the bus stop at the KMart/Vons shopping center that the bus leaves from. I had run around seeking and following some alternative suggestions - Visitor Ctr suggested police station, police station suggested a bike shop, bike shop doesn't open til 10am - too late so I'll risk leaving it at the bike racks by the bus stop between the two stores...)
So I'll take the bus back south to Independence and hitch back up the hill to Onion Vly, where I've left my backpack - except this time I'm keeping my sleeping bag with me so I won't have to book a hotel like last time no matter what...
So then it will be four or five or maybe six days for me to get back to my car. I'm now no longer acclimated so I will take my time getting over Kearsarge pass from Onion Vly, probably will overnight on both sides of the pass before getting back to the PCT. Them I'm faced with Glen Pass, then a few days down one stream till it meets another then up that and finally climb steeply out of that valley and over Bishop Pass. That one is a biggie - about 4000 ft just from the trail and another 3000ft down the other side to the trailhead at South Lake where my car will be. Most thru hikers wouldn't take this pass to resupply, but at my photography-determined pace I don't have enough camera batteries and won't be carrying enough food to make it to the next "on-trail" resupply point at Vermilion Valley Resort (besides, I haven't mailed myself anything there - though they do have a store so I could buy "snacks"...)
Off trail, I've been wrestling with a number of things - um - actually mostly getting to a "stopping point" on this blog. Then a bit of trouble trying to respond to a FastTrak fine for driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, which you can't pay for anymore (unless you've anticipated things by setting up an account. Trouble is, I was supposed to get an invoice mailed, but didn't get that! Seriously, I'm SURE I didn't get it this time, because I was looking for it in my mail. All I ever got was a violation notice. And I spent all day trying to pay (or protest) that using their web site. But I wasn't able to enter the violation number properly, and web site gave no clue that they didn't want the first letter "T" nor the last 4 digits after the dash. This I found out today after giving up and just paying the fine over the phone. And, that wasn't easy either because I was having problems getting any of my several phone options to work. The little app that I have been using has just stopped working after an update, and there's no TMobile service in Bishop, and my ATT SIM card has apparently expired completely for lack of use. And, my Google Phone app has suddenly refused to work??!!! I did mange to set up my Skype account again.
Anyhow, I now need to get going.
I've found out about some open space near town (along Buttermilk Rd which is off of the rd I'm bicycling down) that I plan to overnight at tonight . Then tomorrow morning cycle the rest of the way into town, parking my bike in the rack by the bus stop at the KMart/Vons shopping center that the bus leaves from. I had run around seeking and following some alternative suggestions - Visitor Ctr suggested police station, police station suggested a bike shop, bike shop doesn't open til 10am - too late so I'll risk leaving it at the bike racks by the bus stop between the two stores...)
So I'll take the bus back south to Independence and hitch back up the hill to Onion Vly, where I've left my backpack - except this time I'm keeping my sleeping bag with me so I won't have to book a hotel like last time no matter what...
So then it will be four or five or maybe six days for me to get back to my car. I'm now no longer acclimated so I will take my time getting over Kearsarge pass from Onion Vly, probably will overnight on both sides of the pass before getting back to the PCT. Them I'm faced with Glen Pass, then a few days down one stream till it meets another then up that and finally climb steeply out of that valley and over Bishop Pass. That one is a biggie - about 4000 ft just from the trail and another 3000ft down the other side to the trailhead at South Lake where my car will be. Most thru hikers wouldn't take this pass to resupply, but at my photography-determined pace I don't have enough camera batteries and won't be carrying enough food to make it to the next "on-trail" resupply point at Vermilion Valley Resort (besides, I haven't mailed myself anything there - though they do have a store so I could buy "snacks"...)
Off trail, I've been wrestling with a number of things - um - actually mostly getting to a "stopping point" on this blog. Then a bit of trouble trying to respond to a FastTrak fine for driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, which you can't pay for anymore (unless you've anticipated things by setting up an account. Trouble is, I was supposed to get an invoice mailed, but didn't get that! Seriously, I'm SURE I didn't get it this time, because I was looking for it in my mail. All I ever got was a violation notice. And I spent all day trying to pay (or protest) that using their web site. But I wasn't able to enter the violation number properly, and web site gave no clue that they didn't want the first letter "T" nor the last 4 digits after the dash. This I found out today after giving up and just paying the fine over the phone. And, that wasn't easy either because I was having problems getting any of my several phone options to work. The little app that I have been using has just stopped working after an update, and there's no TMobile service in Bishop, and my ATT SIM card has apparently expired completely for lack of use. And, my Google Phone app has suddenly refused to work??!!! I did mange to set up my Skype account again.
Anyhow, I now need to get going.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
So the initial "Pump-Priming state for this Blog is about as "Done" as I care to take the time right now to make it. My initial concept of just including my own emails has evolved into including "email Threads" including other's emails to me about my travels, and to some limited extent, their own plans, and, a few glipses into my pre-travel activities, intending in these cases to provide some "context" to my trips "back home".
Hopefully in doing so I haven't breached reasonable conventions of "privacy" or assumptions of confidentiality. I have tried to be carefull to remove any specific contact info (emails & phone#s, and limited names to first names only, although I've included some last-name-initials in those cases where the people with the same first name might not want to be confused with the other person with the same first name...
I will be alterting everyone whose emails I've "published" in this way, to give then a chance to review and ask me to remove any or all such messgaes.
In the mean time, this blog will remain "unlisted" and not "searchable" by Google etc., and thus only reachable by those I've specifically sent the link to.
Eventually I plan to fill in the "gaps" between these email threads with links to galleries of my photographs as I post them to my muddyknees site on Smugmug. Unfortunately it may be quite a whuile before I get seriously around to doing so, since my priority is to actually hike the trail, and this is a "full-time" task during the remainder of the summer season in which I can do so.
Hopefully in doing so I haven't breached reasonable conventions of "privacy" or assumptions of confidentiality. I have tried to be carefull to remove any specific contact info (emails & phone#s, and limited names to first names only, although I've included some last-name-initials in those cases where the people with the same first name might not want to be confused with the other person with the same first name...
I will be alterting everyone whose emails I've "published" in this way, to give then a chance to review and ask me to remove any or all such messgaes.
In the mean time, this blog will remain "unlisted" and not "searchable" by Google etc., and thus only reachable by those I've specifically sent the link to.
Eventually I plan to fill in the "gaps" between these email threads with links to galleries of my photographs as I post them to my muddyknees site on Smugmug. Unfortunately it may be quite a whuile before I get seriously around to doing so, since my priority is to actually hike the trail, and this is a "full-time" task during the remainder of the summer season in which I can do so.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
meta: What I'm trying to do here first
What I thought I would try to do here to begin with is re-post in "proper order" the series of emails I've sent to an inconsistent set of people (because I've been in many cases manually re-entering the list of recipients...) on my whereabouts along the Pacific Crest Trail. This way new people reading this can get caught up with the past context.
Most of these emails have focused on the logistics involved in positioning my car typically at the end of a section of trail, bicycling and bussing and hitching myself to the beginning of the section, then hiking forward to my car.
But also, I have engaged in a lot of whining over the technology that keeps failing me (or rather, fails my unrealistic expectations of it's idiotproofedness.)
Most of these emails have focused on the logistics involved in positioning my car typically at the end of a section of trail, bicycling and bussing and hitching myself to the beginning of the section, then hiking forward to my car.
But also, I have engaged in a lot of whining over the technology that keeps failing me (or rather, fails my unrealistic expectations of it's idiotproofedness.)
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