Hiking

Not many exciting pictures, only a couple of hours or so, but that was my first hike :)

You can look at the rest of the pictures of Muir Woods

Ok, this doesn't really count as a hike since I drove around with my mom, but eh, it's Yosemite, so that's an excuse for putting this here anyway :)

You can look at the rest of the pictures of Yosemite

My friend Bob offered to take me on a hike, which I hadn't really done before, so I accepted.
Bob took me to the Big Basin Redwoods, and from HQ, we did the Sunset loop to the 3 falls, and when we were heading back, I noticed a sign that said "Skyline to the Sea Trail, 6 miles".
I asked Bob if he were ok with walking to the Ocean, since we had done the loop somewhat quickly, and we proceeded. It was a nice walk with a nice target of getting to the Ocean.

On the way back, for some reason we got posessed with taking the McCrary Ridge Trail (not sure why anymore), and he 1700 foot elevation climb at the end of the day got Bob a bit tired. We were also running a bit low on sugar and water, so tby the time we made it to the top, the sun was about to set.
We got a few nice pictures of the sunset there, but that's obviously bad news since we were still a good hour away from HQ where the car was parked. Luckily, I was able to call the rangers on my cell phone out of one flaky bar, and they came to pick us up.
Yeah, it's a bit lame to finish the day like that, but we planned this a bit badly, and Bob ran low on sugar, so we had to alter our plans a bit. In the end, we still turned a 3-4H loop hike into a 9H and 21 mile hike.

You can look at the rest of the pictures of Big Basin Redwoods

Since Jen and I are going hiking next weekend, we went on a practise hike Saturday to test the equipment and my hiking shoes.
It was a 2200foot climb over 3 miles (Mission Peak in Fremont), and it took 1H20 on the way up and 1H on the way down. I did ok going up with 40lbs on my body, it was almost harder going down as the road was a bit slippery with the extra weight.
As the day was reasonably windy, there were a few people handgliding, it was fun to watch. It was also weird to see the whole bay as I usually see it from a plane when I'm coming back over Sunol pass.
(credit goes to Jen for some of the pictures)

After the practise Mission Peak Hike, Jen and I used the memorial day 3 day weekend to do the Skyline to the Sea hike.
Basically, it goes from close the intersection of Skyline and Hwy 9 , to Waddell Creek Beach on Hwy 1

After having done a "small" hike around Big Basin Redwoods to the sea without any weight, I remember that we had done about 21 miles in 9 hours, and while I was sore the next day, it wasn't too bad.
I figured doing a 3 day 30+ mile trip wouldn't be too bad, except for the 40lbs+ of weight with gear. This yielded an average hiking speed of about 4kph (2.5mph), with a bit more than 10 miles/day.

In order to supplement the map we had (which wasn't stellar), and add a little fun and recording factor, I took my two garmin GPSes. The Etrex Vista Cx, which is supposedly the hiking one unfortunately had fairly mediocre trail maps, but at least gave some indication of where we were, and was nice for computing time and distance to destination estimates. Incidently, the Etrex ended up having pretty bad reception in the forest, which would be understandable if it were not for my wrist forerunner 305 GPS recording the entire days without problems (except for the 3rd day where its internal batteries died, hence the whole on the map below since I had to rely on the Etrex and it lost reception for 45mn!!!)

Anyway, due to a late start (my getting up late, bad traffic on hwy 17 as it was a beach day, and time to shuttle the cars), we only started the hike around 15:00, but by keeping good pace, we made it from the Castle Rock start at Skyline to the Waterman Gap Camp around 19:45, with 45mn of daylight/twilight remaining.


You can download that GPS track and the waypoints
A few pictures from the first day are below (and here is a link to the rest of the hiking pictures from the 3 day hike of Skyline to the Sea through Big Basin Redwoods )

Sunday, we started the second day a bit earlier, 10:30-ish, and had plenty of time to almost reach the Sunset Trail Camp (if we really had to, we could have, but it was full anyway, so no reason for rushing). Instead, we found a nice non-charted camp site (well, now I have a GPS waypoint :) )

Living in the rough :)
With a tent, inflatable pads, sleeping bags, dry food, gas heater, all you need is water. Since carrying water is heavy, the best solution is a water filter with water pump and purifier to get more water. Dinners that way can actually be quite tasty :)

On the 3rd day, we were already a good way down sunset trail, and went to Golden Falls, Silver Falls and Berry Creek Falls.

Then, I recognized a familiar sign pointing to McCrary Ridge Trail, which is where Bob and I did a fairly strainuous finish for our hike. But considering it was going the wrong way, and that it sucked without an extra 40lbs on our backs, we stayed on course for the Ocean :)

Almost here, I can taste it :)

Yeah, success! :)
It was a nice, albeit very windy day at the beach. We just weren't exactly wearing the right clothes for it :)

After that, was a reasonably fun drive back to Castle Rock to pick up the other car (Bonni Doon, Hwy 9, Skyline), and some rest at home our respective tired legs.

Again, here's a link to the rest of the hiking pictures from the 3 day hike of Skyline to the Sea through Big Basin Redwoods )

If you just wanted the Pictures of the Hike in Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park , you can follow the link.

Before the Hike

July 4th weekend was time for a new hike, but this time at much higher elevation, taking High Sierra Trail starting around 7800 feet in Sequoia Park, and going to Kings Canyon.
Unfortunately, I got sick with a cold right before the hike, and I hadn't quite recovered by the time we headed out. I was doing well enough by friday to do the flight from Palo Alto to Visalia (I figured it was easier and faster to fly there on a friday night than be stuck in traffic with everyone else, but turns out traffic was reasonably light, and picking up a rental car in Visalia after 18:00 was not a piece of cake).
Anyway, we got to three rivers on friday evening without problems, but on the next morning, only arrived at Lodgepole to pick up our wilderness passes around 11:30 (long ride up, and late start). By then, the sole ranger giving out wilderness permits was gone for lunch (great!), we had to wait in a long slow line despite having a reservation, and only started at the trail head in Crescent Meadow at 13:00 (we were kind of pissed about losing about 45mn just to pick up a permit, 45mn that we could have really used at the end of the day)

Radios

Before leaving, I also asked some rangers what frequencies they were on, and what frequency was appropriate for use if we needed to call them for help. Very disappointingly so, they answered that they don't give out the frequencies, and that it's illegal for us to use them (I corrected him that it was not illegal when calling for help, which he eventually acknowledged). I tried 3 different rangers, but eventually I had one tell me that he would rather that I call an overhead plane, which would call a control tower, which would call the national park over the phone, which would relay to dispatch, which would call a ranger over a radio, rather than me talking to the ranger on the radio directly. That's very stupid if you ask me...
Anyway, along the way, I put my ham radio on scan, and picked up enough frequencies that I was confident I could call someone for help, or relay such a call, if needed. Between that, and an FRS radio which could be used as a quick way to scan just those channels, or to communicate between Jen and I (FRS to Ham) if/when we had to split up.
Now, is it worth the weight? Well, while the trail was well travelled, we only ever saw one ranger during the 3 days, so if you had to wait 5-6H for someone to walk back to the main camp, call for help, and then wait for the ranger to come back, it could be dark before you saw any. Luckily, we didn't have to call anyone, but I think it was a good additional safety to bring.

GPS / Garmin MapSource / National Geographic Topo

I took my two GPSes, the Etrex Vista CX, which is good for displaying a moving map, distance and time to next waypoint, as well as average speed, altitude gain/loss, etc. Unfortunately, it's otherwise total crap for recording, or trends over the day, as its reception is just way too bad even in light forests, which is inexcusable for a $350 hiking GPS (not counting map prices).
Now, the kicker is that I also have a wrist Garmin Forerunner 305, and while it's only supposed to be a running GPS, it has much better reception, and no stupid firmware that creates 300-400 tracks over a few days because it makes a brand new track each time it loses reception for a few seconds (Garmin, that was very stupid of you to do that, please fix it already).
Thanks to that forerunner, I have a nice and complete track of the whole hike, as well as reliable stats like distance, average speed, time spent (I didn't stop the clock during breaks), and heart rate stats, as well as a calories burned number, which I'm not sure I can trust that much (or if I do, that was 30,000 calories over 3 days). Now, the small problem is that the Forerunner runs out of intternal batteries after about a day and a half, and is hard to recharge, so I bought a USB charger that runs out of AAA batteries, and generates USB power than I can connect to the Forerunner at night (unfortunately, Garmin made a stupid big a heavy docking station for the otherwise small and light watch).
Garmin's Topo maps were pretty bad for Big Bassin Redwoods, missing most trails, but they were better for Sequoia Park. I however looked at National Geographic Topo Maps to see how they were better than Garmin's. While it took a little while to get the software working (I had to update to the latest unreleased version to talk to my GPS, because for some reason the software was incapable of exporting waypoints and routes in Garmin Mapsource format, forcing me to upload the data to my GPS, and then re-download it to Mapsource).
I guess the Topo software really isn't meant for GPS users that have Mapsource or something similar with their own topo maps, but I found a couple of uses for it anyway. First, its topo maps are clearly better than what Garmin provides, but also they contain full elevation info, so you can select a bunch of waypoints on the map, and upload waypoints with elevation in your GPS (know how high the hill you're climbing is, before you get there). Then, you basically take a crayon and draw a route over the topo map. The topo software is then able to create a route with elevation for each point, and can output a nice elevation profile.
To see what I mean, have a look at the map I was able to prepare beforehand:

Is that too much tech? Does it potentially remove from the pleasure of hiking? Well, to each his own, but when I'm tired or the sun is setting, I like to know how high I still have to climb or go. On the first day, we only pushed as far as we did because I had precise data on where we were going and how long it'd take us to get that at fast pace. I also value being able to put a waypoint on the last water source, as you'll never know when it'll come handy (that first night, I was quite happy to be able to come back to it, as you'll read below)

The Hike

Why don't I start with the end? Here's what we actually did

This also shows you how the pre-printed maps make it much clearer how much effort you have left (check Kaweah Gap on the second day, and how it looks close, but really wasn't).

Mt Whitney? Mmmh, no, I'll pass, thanks :)

Day 1

As mentioned above, we unfortunately got a late start during the first day, both Jen and I were suffering from cold symptoms still, which isn't good for peak performance, and of course, the air at 7000 feet and above is thinner. All in all, not a good combination. Her pack was about 25lbs and mine, along with my belt pouch, was around 43lbs due to the extra weight from the bear container (and that was without any bears in the container itself :) ).
By looking at my GPS watch, I was quickly able to tell that our pace was pretty slow (less than 1.5mph, compared to a usual 2.5mph), and that we'd have to worry about reaching our destination by nightfall, so we tried to hasten the pace. We did ok, until a horrendous 600ft steep climb to reach Bearpaw Meadow when we were both exhausted, and in my case starting to feel sick again. I really really struggled through it, and was thankful for a pouch of carbohydrate paste that perked me a up a little bit (I was likely low on sugar too because I couldn't really eat much of anything).
Unfortunately, our slow pace up BearPaw really changed my original ETA, and I was now wondering whether we'd be able to make it back down to our revised checkpoint of LonePine Creek. It was really close, but after reviewing map and GPS data, we decided to make a got for it (not super-wise, but we managed in the end). We made it to BearPaw at a revised 20:00, which was less than 1H from total darkness, and 17mn from sunset. Unfortunately, due to a trail missing between the map and reality, and my GPS not doing a good job telling us which trail we were on before walking for a certain distance, we lost further time (10-15mn) before heading down the hill to LonePine Creek.
Long story short, it was a photo finish: we almost ran down the hill, and finished with flashlights, crossed the bridge and then realized we were screwed for two reasons: the water which we thought would be there, was totally unreachable (very deep, and unhikeable), and we had no idea where the campsite was, with light pretty much being gone. We started hiking back up on the other side of the bridge, and luckily, when I was about to drop my pack, and go for emergency measures, Jen found the actual campsite at 21:00, a few minutes from total darkness with little moonlight.

At that point, we were left with the small problem of water. I first continued ahead in hope for a small creek that wouldn't be on the map, but no such luck, so I eventually backtracked towards bearpaw, where I remembered crossing some small creek while running down. 45mn later, around 21:45, I had water (it took a long time because the water pump seal was failing and it was pumping very little), and Jen had started a fire. The water pump problem kind of worried me though, because that was our only source of pure water, we had no backup for it, and it looked like it was pumping worse throughout the day (hard to tell for sure as I mostly pumped in the dark so as not to be eaten by insects attracted by the light and the water).
The other worrisome part was that I realized that I was still sick when after all that effort (and apparently 10,000 calories burned according to my watch), I was barely able to force myself to eat half a burger. To make matters worse, I was not able to fall asleep, didn't have any sleeping pills (bad, bad me), and slept probably less than 2H combined that night

Day 2: Up

While I was up bright an early that day, having not slept much anyway, Jen wasn't as she was thankfully able to sleep a bit more than me.
However, in return, we only left camp around 09:30 (without tearing it down), and left with a day pack towards Hamilton Lake. While the climb wasn't very harduous, and we were much more lightly loaded, maybe the added altitude (now above 8000 feet), and my guess is especially the lack of sleep and shared sickness made us quite slow. My forerunner GPS showed that we averaged less than 1mph on the way up for 2.5 miles.
By the time we got to Hamilton Lakes, we had crossed a one stream with our stream crossing shoes (our hiking boots were nicely totally water proof, but only allowed us to cross water up to hankle level, for knee level, we had to put open shoes, dry up, and switch to hiking boots again). Unfortunately, going with open feet when we had just put new bandaids and moleskin on our feet (well, mostline for my blisters). This wasn't ideal, so when we finally got to Hamilton Lakes and saw the next river crossing that I hadn't planned for due to mis-reading the map, we looked around and decided it was pretty enough, and that the further target goal of Kaweah Gap was still way high, and likely out of reach for the day if we didn't want to be racing for it, with little energy and a good chance if coming back in the dark, which just wasn't a good idea at all.
This is also where the pre-printed map with elevation gain came in very handy for making a decision: we had barely done one third of the way up, and it was already 13:00. The Garmin map just isn't as useful there, and the NG Topo! map with route and elevation profile came in much handy there

not that useful


good

The good news is that instead of suffering uphill for several more hours, we got to rest in front of the beautiful lake with 6 waterfalls, and we at least got to fulfill our goal of touching snow :) (although come to think of it we should have built a snowman, a fitting thing to do in July :)
Yes, it's sad that we didn't get to the top and got to see on the other side of the Great Western divide, and I know we could have done it on a normal day, but I was just getting sicker and was happy to get back to camp and crash that night

Day2 Back/Day 3

After a nice break at Hamilton Lakes, we headed back and moved the camp back from LonePine back up to BearPaw Meadow since we had extra time on our hands. LonePine just wasn't that good, as it had no local water, and we were too low on water when Jen got pretty severely dehydrated since she wasn't drinking as regularly as I was.
We had a nice and uneventful night at BearPaw, where I was able to get some well needed sleep.

The 3rd day was uneventful, we just hiked back from BearPaw to Crescent Meadow at a pace that seemed good enough for us, but was really slow (we were actually slower on the way down with 1.4mph average, than the way up on the first day with 1.6mph average, and got passed by someone with a broken ankle, hopping on ski poles :) ).
By then, despite the low energy and fairly slow speed, I started feeling better since at least I was eating at least a third or half of the calories I was burning, instead of close to nothing :) (I lost 3-4 pounds during that trip, which is always good :) )

Trip Home

Jen nicely offered me a man on deathrow's last meal in Visalia since I was not going to be able to eat much food after my surgery two days later, and that was yummy :)
Then, just to make things more fun, when we got back to the airport and after dropping off the rental keys in the lockbox, the plane I rented failed preflight and we got stranded in the airport. More on that here .

Stats

Here's what my Forerunner recorded. All the numbers look ok, and the calorie burned numbers might be a bit high, but from some reading I've done ( this page is interesting ), it sounds like I could actually burn more than 500 calories an hour with my weight and load, so the numbers might not be that far off.

Day	Avg Speed	Distance	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Calories Burnt
Day 1	1.6mph	12.34mi	7H56	123bpm	170bpm	10632 cals
Day 2 Up	0.8mph	2.57mi	3H22	117bpm	147bpm	3214 cals
Day 2 Back	1.2mph	3.92mi	3H17	121bpm	151bpm	4396 cals
Day 3	1.4mph	10.94mi	7H36	112bpm	143bpm	9151 cals

What I learned

• You don't hike as far at altitude and when you are sick, or on the 3rd day (duh!) :)
  
• Relying on a single water pump/purifier is a bad idea
  
• Backups come in handy, especially for fire
  
• Extra food is better than not enough
  
• Know where you are, how far you think you can go, and how far you have to go (a GPS with waypoints and ETA calculation comes in very handy there)
  
• Communication (radios) can be very handy, especially if you have to split up
  
• Do you have everything you think you need in your medkit? (sleeping pills too?)
  
• I confirmed that the Etrex Vista Cx would be a great GPS if it only had a couple of firmware fixes (don't make 400 5 dot tracks for christ's sake), and a GPS receiver that's at least as good as the one in the much smaller Forerunner 305. The fact that I need to bother with the forerunner to record the tracks and accurate waypoints is sad.
  
• Last, but not least, you have to be ready to turn back if you're not going to make it.
  
• The hat with net over my face against moskitoes was a lifesaver :)
  

All the Pictures

I combined Jen's pictures with mine, and mixed'em up chronologically thanks to EXIF time (and prior time synchronization between the cameras) with jhead -n * (that's where unix comes in handy)
Anyway, here are the Pictures of the Hike in Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park

Jen and I went for a 3 day weekend around Monterey after Thanksgiving.
The first day was spent Kayaking around Moss Landing, and seeing the numerous birds and sea life that hangs out around there (Pelicans, Sea Otters, Seals, Sea Lions, and more).
While it doesn't really count as hiking, it still felt like close enough considering that the idea was still to enjoy wildlife while self powering your way through it :)

That was actually quite nice, especially when we saw a sea otter carrying a baby on her belly. We went up to the end of the estuary, then had a nice picnic at a landing spot, and headed back.
The "interesting" part of the trip was when the rudder controls that broke, and when one of the passengers who happened to be carrying tools, and zip ties among other things, was able to put them to use to fix the kayak and allow for the trip to continue :)

The other pictures from the Kayaking in Moss Landing Slough with its wildlife are here

Day 3 was poised for rain, but we hopefully still had some time before that
started, so we decided to try one of our two planned hiked, and walk around Point Lobos, and see China Cove, Bird Island, and others ( download GPS track )

The hike itself is more of a walk: the terrain is really very easy, and we only covered a few miles and stayed 3 hours or so, but that was enough to see the main views. It is indeed a very nice coastline
Rain came down soon after we made it back to the car, so we were ok (I was tracking the storm with near realtime satellite nexrad data from weather underground on my cellphone, and we knew it was about to fall on our heads and got back to the car just before it started raining. Yeah for technology! :)

The other pictures from the Point Lobos Hiking are here

This time, the point was to do a hike closeby and something that would be a good exercise/practise run for our upcoming 10 day hike on the Jon Muir trail. Jennifer remarked that the Henry Coe was rated a difficulty 8 out of 10 and therefore would be a good trail to try take. I agreed.
On top of that, I also ended up with a backpack/fanny pack combination of about 50 lbs, which there again was more weight than necessary, but was meant to be practise for John Muir where we'll have to lug around around 15lbs of food.

We had a little bit of a late start on Saturday, and it was interesting finding the new but badly marked entrance on hwy 152. It's actually here .

But before I start, here are the stats for the 3 days:

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Total Ascent	Total Descent	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR
Day 1	2.5mph?	1.6mph	13mi	?	7H46	?	?	?	?
Day 2 Lake Loop	2.7mph	?	3.45mi	1H15	1H28	+777ft	-773ft	97bpm	126bpm
Day 2	2.2mph	1.5mph	9.05mi	4H06	6H13	+3683ft	-3697ft	99bpm	130bpm
Day 3	2.3mph	1.7mph	7.25mi	3H06	4H53	+2271ft	-2731ft	104bpm	145bpm

(sorry the first day is missing data due to the forerunner 305 deleting its first day's worth of stats when it ran out of internal plot memory)

The planned hike (not actually matching reality quite due to the Topo! maps not being up to date compared to actual trails) is shown on this picture and this is the actual hike as shown on mapsource (incidently, the mapsource maps were even more inaccurate than the Topo! ones).
While I'm at it, you can get the GPS track here and the Google Earth track (kml) used to make these pictures (make sure to select size original for full res pictures))

Technology

I brought my Garmin Etrex Vista Cx at my Forerunner 305 to get a better track recording (since Garmin didn't see fit to put a Sirf III chip in the Vista Cx unfortunately).
On top of that, the 3 day hike overflowed the Forerunner buffer and I lost the first day's worth by the time the 3rd day was over :( (so the resulting track I have has bad quality points for the 1st day as those come from the crappy Vista Cx's reception. Update: Garmin just came out with a Vista HCx with apparently has a GPS receiver at least as good as Sirf3, which could make this problem mostly go away).
On the toy section, I brought a solar panel generating 6V USB power (yes, USB is supposed to be 5V, but they overvolt it to charge cell phones like the nokias that require at least 6V). It came in handy right away as my forerunner turned out to have dead batteries when I started the hike (apparently, it got turned on after I charged it)
Later during the hike, I used the solar panels to recharge the forerunner as I went along, and the Vista Cx ran the entire 3 days on a set of AA NiMh 2200mAh batteries.
The last tech piece was a multiband radio that we would only have used for emergencies, and that thankfully stayed mostly unused

Day 1

Anyway, we were on the trail by 12:45 and I made the mistake of thinking that about 2l of water would be enough to carry until we hit the next water point. The only thing is that the next water point ended up being much further than expected. We really should have carried 3l each, if not close to 4 (all the creeks except the one 1m down the trail from where we started), were effectively dry).

Actually, if it weren't for a remnant of creek which we were barely able to pump water from (after a scum pond that looked so bad that it was unclear we could get usable water out of it), we could have been in trouble I think. Moral of the story for Henry Coe outside of the winter: bring plenty of water (3-4l per person for a day hike with a full pack).
In hindsight there was one watering hole a bit off the trail that we should definitely have filled up at (picture below)

Anyway, after a long walk (13 miles, a bit more than planned due to us not taking the main roads), we got to Mississippi Lake soon before sunset and setup camp by the lake.
It was a bit windy that night, but we otherwise were able to get a decent amount of sleep. The bad part is the blisters I got on my first day, especially on both pinky toes which scored double blisters (one on each side of the toe). That's what I get for my feet being too wide: they don't even fit in a wide boot.

Here's 50lbs worth of gear :) (10lbs in the fanny pack)







This was the only (already quite low) water point we found on the way. We should have walked off the trail and filled there







this was the only water we found by the trail, and only thanks to intel from another hiker

Day 2

Since we had more time to hike a somewhat shorter distance on Day 2, we figured we'd first hike around Mississippi lake. We didn't quite realize that it was actually a 3.5 mile hike around the lake, but eh, we were there, and hiking without our packs wasn't too bad. We also found a nice alternate camp site with a picnic table.
Day 2 was going to be a somewhat shorter hike but we missed a turn somewhere due to trying to climb a hill a little too hard, and ignoring a path that actually would have ended up taking us a slightly shorter route.
After that, the next shortcut we could have taken, just didn't exist, and looking at the topo map, the 0.1 mile shortcut would likely not have been able to exist.
We just took the longer route around and eventually ended up at Coit Lake in time to find a nice camp site (sheltered from the wind, and with water access). For Day 2, we ended up carrying way more water than needed, but better safe than sorry this time (we actually passed by a house at Pacheco Camp for park rangers and volunteers with running water, a fridge, and even a shower outside!)
The second night meant more blisters to heal, but we had a great night at that site.

Day 3

Day 3 was supposed to be an easy short day, but it was actually a gruesome hike in the baking sun. In order to not needlessly carry even more weight, I left with only 2.5l of water instead of a total possible of 4.5l (as 2.5l had been more than enough for the previous day). It turned out not to be a very wise decision, as the short hike too much more water and energy than I had planned for.
We went up some pretty steep climbs and descents that were even steeper (and quite dicy to walk in pebbles and dirt), Jennifer started to overheat (heat exhaustion), and we had to stop to let her body cool off a bit, as we were already hydrating pretty well. I ended up picking another 5-6lbs from Jennifer's pack which in addition to the extra water I had, brought my pack up to 60lbs I think.
I was still doing reasonably well with the weight, but I was worrying that I'd run out of water before getting to the end.
Turns out we got back to Dowdy Ranch with enough water left (a bit more than 1l combined between us), but considering the hard walking and weather, I was still nervous about it until it was clear that we'd make it, and 1l isn't just that much to have left for that terrain and weather.
The last picture shows the elevation gain/loss. It's not that much until you see how steep some of those descents were, and on gravel no less... (check out around mile 4)

We're almost there!!!

And on the way back we saw some wildlife on the road, including a mountain lion (probably not a bobcat)

Conclusion

The hike went reasonably well considering. The GPS and maps did help, we got lucky with water on the first day, and saw very few ticks considering (we were told they were very abundant).
The park was not the most scenic place ever, but it was decent, and made for a good exercise/proving grounds that was close by
The good part is also how google earth had 3D info for the park, and does a good job showing the trail in the mountains. If it weren't for the bad blisters which I hope to avoid with sock liners next time, it would almost have been a perfect trip
To end, you can look at all the pictures of the hike at Henry Coe Park
Oh yeah, and if you go during the summer, assume that the only water you'll see are the lakes (which is close to being accurate), so carry up to 3-4l of water per day to be safe. Running out there does suck...

Labels: hiking

Since I wasn't able to find this online, and I had to spend some time and scripting to generate the said file, here's for the benefit of others, a list of all the known bearboxes in the Sierras (Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks) in GPX format for most GPS software

My GPX file was based off data from http://climber.org/data/BearBoxes/AllBoxes.html , but I found that data hard to use or map, so hopefully my GPX file can be useful to you (I have prefixed waypoint names with a leading space so that they sort separately from your other waypoints)

Comments/thanks can go here

Foreword

This hike over July 4th was our last training hike before our planned 10 day hike of the end of the John Muir Trail(to Whitney Portal)
I was able to get my backpack down to 35 to 43lbs depending on how much water I was carrying, and 7lbs for the fanny pack, while Jennifer's backpack was down to 20-25lbs depending on the water. Those were reasonable weights considering that they included a bulky bear vault 400 and an ursack with aluminum liner (we'll need those two to carry enough food for 10 days on our next hike)

Like the previous hikes, I brought the Garmin Vista Cx and the Forerunner 305 as a way to get a real recorded track (see previous comments about the Vista Cx recording crap trails in many cases).
After doing some power math, I decided that my previous solar panel was woefully inadequate, and that the lack of battery to store the solar panel energy for later use, was disqualifying. Instead I brought my flexible solar panels from my ScotteVest and the accompanying lithium ion battery back. But because I'm a moron, I forgot to bring the USB power adapter connector I made, and I had to build one out of a couple of tie wraps and a battery USB charger I had happened to bring (thanks to Jennifer for reminding me that tie wraps were also electrical wires :) )

Unfortunately, some random failure (never figured out what), actually caused my forerunner to go dead after the first night, hence a second day track that isn't as good since it was only recorded on the Vista Cx (fortunately, we mostly were within good reach of GPS signals that second day, so the track isn't too bad). The third day, I was able to run the Forerunner after it miraculously came back to life and I was able to give it enough charge with 4 AAAs to run the 3rd day.

Here are the trip results (I gave the calorie information from the forerunner, but it's way off, I've already told Garmin that they need to rework their algorithm. It's likely off by at least a factor of 2, and their tech support said they only take speed into account, not even heart rate, altitude, or ascents. How lame...)

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent	Max Elevation	Cals
Day 1	2.1mph	1.5mph	16.2mi	7H43	11H06	116bpm	145pbm	3757	10053	2064
Day 2	2.3mph	1.4mph	14.6mi	6H21	10H30	?	?	3037	11057	?
Day 3	2.6mph	2.0mph	9.4mi	3H40	4H50	101bpm	126bpm	533	9065	1114

Day 1

Anyway, for the trip, we flew the previous evening to Mammoth, which took a little less than 2H instead of maybe 6H of driving (you can see the other pictures of the flight )

We got up pretty early the next morning to get the first 07:00 shuttle to Tuolumne Maedows from the far base of Mammoth Mountain (adventure center) and we were at the Devils Postpile just before 08:00. Unfortunately, due to me being a moron, I left my camera in the shuttle and had to run after it for a bit more than a mile. Even without the backpack, running at 7500ft was a good way to get in shape :). Luckily, I did get my camera back and we started on the trail around 09:00.
Since we were there, we first went to check out the Devil Postpile national monument, and it is indeed pretty impressive. Seeing the almost perfect hexagonal shapes on top is pretty nice

After that nice beginning was time to head out for our actual hike to Tuolumne Maedows, and cover the 14+ miles and 3000ft elevation gain ahead of us. While we lost a bit of time due to a clogged water filter problem, and a late departure with my camera issue, we did decent time. We were originally hoping to make it to Thousand Island Lake on the first night, but that was just a bit out of reach. We did however reach Garnett Lake, which was still a good distance (finding a campsite was also a bit hard due to most lakes having lots of rules about where you can't camp).
The starry sky by the water at Garnett Lake was quite nice.

Thankfully we didn't have any problems with the rangers because we didn't have our actual permit with us. After calling 3 times and getting briefings over the phone and 3 people who confirmed our permit would be in the overnight pick up mailbox, it wasn't there we we got there that evening, and we just didn't have the time to wait the next morning for them to open and find out what happened to our permit: we'd have been more than 2 hours behind schedule and would never have made it to anywhere close to Garnett lake. This is kind of sad considering we played by the rules and did everything we could to be legal. At least we had our reservation confirmation with us.

Don't camp here, keep walking...


Oh, there comes my transport team, please carry my bag ;)


That's virtually the only snow left we were able to touch on the trail. It had fast melted


Garnett Lake, our destination for night 1




The red path is portion of what we did on the first day (blue is day 2)

Day 2

Day 2 was also a good hike. We covered a good amount of terrain. The Highlight of the day was crossing Donahue Pass a bit above 11,000ft. Jennifer had a bit of a hard time part of the day likely due to dehydration and a bit of altitude sickness. I had mild symptoms (light headache) but was ok otherwise. I was hydrating a lot though, so that probably helped.
It was nice to see people on the trail (mostly going the other way), including the insane people who do the whole PCT (Pacific Coast Trail, or 4-5 months of walking 3000 miles).
Once we were past the pass, it was a long and nice downhill to Lyell fork, which we pretty much followed the entire way to Tuolumne Maedows.
We did however stop exactly at our planned stop for the night, along Lyell just down a quite steep 600ft vertical descent a mere 30mn before sunset. That was however probably pushing a bit more than necessary as Jennifer was having some boot/blister issues, and was also fatigued, which is not the best combination when you're fast descending pretty rugged terrain with loose gravel and big steps soon before sunset. We got lucky though and made it down to the forest down to where the water joins the trail again just in time to set camp before sunset. This also gave us a campsite with fewer mosquitoes than the foot bridge area higher up where we could also have camped.
Admittedly, we were a bit close to the water, but we just didn't have the time to go any further and Jennifer was too exhausted to go any further anyway. Regardless, we kept a clean camp site, so it shouldn't matter either way.

Their camp site was not even lose to being legal, but finding the legal ones wasn't easy either




Thousand Island Lake






A long gradual climb to Donahue pass




And here's the other side, finally...

luckily we did this piece going down to the river, it was nice that way :)

Day 3

Day 3 was smooth sailing. While Jennifer unfortunately had issues with blistered skin going raw right on her ankle, making walking quite painful, moleskin and super glue took care of that. We did some pretty good time still, with 2.6mph moving time and 2.0mph average speed.
By 14:00, we had reached Tuolumne Maedows.

The problem at that point was getting back to Mammoth, and after about 1H of asking, we got lucky and had a nice couple who drove us east on 120 back to 395/Lee Vining.

From there we got a cab back to Mammoth. I opted not to fly back out that day due to some very ugly looking clouds over the Sierras, which made it potentially dicy to fly home, and the fact that by the time the weather improved, I was feeling tired, so we just spend the night at the nice Shilo Inn in Mammoth.
The flight back home the next morning was uneventful.

Conclusion

We learned a few things on this hike. My feet faired much better with sock liners, foot powder, and proper tightening. Jennifer's boots were so so though and she opted to get new ones.
While we covered some good distances at altitude with the weight we were carrying, we also found out that now that I lost some additional weight, I actually do need to eat my daily share of calories, or I get hungry (something that wasn't the case before). We also figured that taking diamox would probably be a good idea for our next trip since we'll be climbing higher and longer. No need to add altitude sickness to the list of challenges if it can be mostly avoided.

For the rest, you can look at all the pictures of this hike from Devil's Postpile to Tuolumne Maedows , and you can also download a garmin gps track along with route and waypoints (or the Google Earth kml version )

Labels: hiking

Foreword

Jennifer had started the John Muir Trail southbound several years back, but her group hit a freak snow storm in early september and had to back out from Palisades Lakes back down to the Golden Staircase, and out Bishop Pass (with much difficulty since this was in fresh snow). Since then, she had wanted to go back and finish the trail, which is what we did this time.
We had planned for up to ten days of hiking, hoping to finish it in 9. We actually managed to get out at the end of day 8.
I had no desire to do the lonely and long 6-8 hour two car drive to Lonepine and Bishop to have a car waiting for us at the exit while leaving the first car at the entrance, so I managed to find a plane I was able to rent for 10 days (which is a bit hard to do), and we ended up flying to Bishop (the other option being to fly to lonepine and catching a bus to Bishop, which was a bit iffy if you missed the bus).
Of course, this now meant that we had to find a ride from bishop airport to city center, one from the hotel to the trail head the next day, and then one from Lonepine back to Bishop at the end. This isn't as easy as it seems because there is virtually no public transportation there (Bishop has a dial a ride system which doesn't work on weekends), and no taxis. Luckily, we found some nice locals who offered their driving services for a fee. Getting dropped at South Lake Trailhead in Bishop was $50, and getting a ride back from Whitney Portal Trailhead, through Lonepine and to Bishop was $100, which was actually a good price considering it's a 1H+ drive.
That whole plan worked out fine, except for the fact that like an idiot, I forgot half my luggage in the trunk of my car in Palo Alto and only found out after landing in Bishop, so I had to fly back to Palo Alto to pick it up (that was thursday 9th). Luckily, I had a fast plane and did the round trip in less than 3H (vs 12H+ of driving) while Jennifer went to the ranger station and picked up our permits.


As for our backpacks, this time we had to carry a fair amount of food to last 2 people for up to 10 days. Neither Jennifer or I had much spare fat to burn, so we couldn't go too low on the calories. I figured we had to have at least 2500cal/day, which was still a good 1000 to 1500 calorie difficiency per day, but with each gram of carb/protein giving 4 cals, and each gram of fat giving 9 cals, it worked out to one pound of high fat foods was about 2500 cals, so in theory we needed 20 pounds of food for 2 people over 10 days.
The food that Jennifer computed separately ended up weighing 25 pounds when you add the two packed ursacks S29, which was very darn close to what I had computed.


While we found out later that unfortunately, some bears around Rae Lakes actually beat the ursacks (one chewed through the bag and the aluminum liner apparently, while another bear walked away with the ursack to work on opening it later), I was still thankful that there were conditionally approved at the time and that we were able to shed some load and space compared to the heavier and bulkier bear canisters.
In the end, my pack (which was an ultralight 2.2lbs 60l bag) weighed a hefty 52lbs with all the food, cooking ware, water filter, clothes, and more. On top of that were several pounds with the water (up to 9lbs if I filled up my camelback and my nalgene), two which I had to add my fanny pack with another 8lbs of stuff (emergency radio, GPS, batteries, solar chargers, cables, swiss army knife, duct tape, med kit, etc...). I know I could have shedded some weight there, although I wanted to test some of the equipment and I was hoping that I'd be able to cope with a 60-65lbs load, even if my weight was around 157, and it was clearly way beyond the recommended "not more than a thrid of your weight" rule.
In hindsight, I could have shedded 2-3lbs without missing anything, but the rest would have been at the expense of the trip quality (no GPS, camera, etc...), or safety (no radio), so I don't have much regrets. I was almost tempted ot bring a second water filter, seeing how many moving parts and seals those things have, and little it takes for them to fail, leaving you with drinking questionable water.
Jennifer had 25-27lbs in her pack, which is obviously less, but was plenty of challenge for her uphill (she would however beat me downhill because I just wasn't nimble enough with all that stuff on my back and had to step down carefully). She was a bit disappointed for not being able to carry more, as she had been training for the last year, but my guess is that while she had plenty of cardio, she was light on core body strength and leg muscles (squats, walking lunges uphill while carrying weights, etc...). For me, since I had been doing boot camp for the last 4 years or so, I was actually doing well enough with the 65lbs uphill, and felt fine when my weight dropped to 55lbs or so.

On the GPS front, I had just bought/upgraded to a Etrex Legend HCx (I bought the legend initially because I'm pissed at Garmin for not allowing me to turn off incorrect baro altitude in pressurized planes). The Etrex did a pretty good job of recording the track, although it kept telling me that I had less than I really did, and then would record longer tracks each day (no, it's not user error :) ). I also still had the forerunner for the convenience of having altitude and distance done each day at my wrist, as well as heart rate to see if I was pushing a bit too hard when going uphill with all that weight.

Here are the results for the trip (the calories are of course all wrong, Garmin doesn't know how to compute them, but it gives a point of reference):

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/10	2.3mph	1.2mph	12.52mi	6H08	9H03	124bpm	151pbm	+4033ft/-4960ft	8622ft/11968ft	1604
08/11	2.1mph	1.2mph	10.61mi	5H06	7H31	123bpm	147pbm	+4870ft/-2710ft	7867ft/10853ft	1376
08/12	2.1mph	1.1mph	10.99mi	5H20	9H05	115bpm	145pbm	+4382ft/-3907ft	10039ft/12109ft	1363
08/13	2.2mph	1.3mph	11.86mi	5H23	9H30	116bpm	152pbm	+3800ft/-4642ft	8474ft/12135ft	1465
08/14	2.0mph	1.2mph	10.92mi	5H30	8H28	111bpm	147pbm	+4144ft/-3923ft	9478ft/120004ft	1404
08/15	2.3mph	1.4mph	14.08mi	6H02	9H38	115bpm	149pbm	+4604ft/-4377ft	10308ft/13208ft	1727
08/16	2.1mph	1.1mph	08.07mi	3H54	7H15	107bpm	144pbm	+4324ft/-2565ft	10262ft/12240ft	1039
08/17	2.1mph	1.4mph	14.10mi	5H35	9H49	115bpm	147pbm	+4453ft/-7468ft	8366ft/14514ft	1532

Total Ascent: 34,807ft (
>
 10,000m)


Total Descent: 34,835ft (
>
 10,000m)


Total Distance: 93 miles (
>
 150km)


Min Altitude: 7,867ft


Max Altitude: 14,514ft

Day 1: Bishop Pass

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/10	2.3mph	1.2mph	12.52mi	6H08	9H03	124bpm	151pbm	+4033ft/-4960ft	8622ft/11968ft	1604

We got a ride up to South Lake and arrived at the trail head around 10:00.
The funny thing is that we met my friend and coworker Arturo and ski buddy Bill at the trail head. What are the odds of that?
We were however not able to keep up with them since they were lighter weight, and Jennifer had tried to take some weight off me, which slowed her down too much (I took that extra weight back soon afterwards and we did better).

Obviously, I did feel the almost 65lbs on my back (with water), but I was able to carry them up to the top of Bishop Pass without any major problems. That was our first 12,000ft peak (well, close to it), and we went through it fine (the diamox probably helped a bit).

We had enough time to hike down to LeConte Canyon and log a mile or two on the John Muir trail before finding a nice camp site where we were able to have our first and only camp fire (every other night, we were higher than 10,000ft and fires were forbidden there)

Top of Bishop Pass



our only camp fire...

Day 2: Golden Staircase

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/11	2.1mph	1.2mph	10.61mi	5H06	7H31	123bpm	147pbm	+4870ft/-2710ft	7867ft/10853ft	1376

We were a bit slow to get ready in the morning due to bad synchronization and we both already had to fix our feet since we both have weird feet that don't fit in boots), but we got out eventually (10:30) and headed for the Golden Staircase. Oh, I also forget that we were greeted by two little bambies with their mom. It was nice to see them around us, they were quite cute :)
Oh, also some very small chipmunk managed to eat through an odor proof bag I had to stash under some rocks (it didn't fit in the 2 ursacks). To this day, unless the odor proof bags are a scam (it was well sealed), I'm still not sure how it found the food. It only took a couple of small bites though, so no biggie.
Note that there is nothing golden about that staircase ;) but we got up it and to a stream dumping into Palisades Lake and snatched the only nice campsite by beating the other hikers who made the mistake of taking a break in the wrong place :)

Day 3: Mather Pass

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/12	2.1mph	1.1mph	10.99mi	5H20	9H05	115bpm	145pbm	+4382ft/-3907ft	10039ft/12109ft	1363

Luckily, our hike was timed well so that we only had to worry about Mather Pass on the 3rd and not have to do it right after the Golden Staircase like some. It was one of those passes where the grading and the size of steps made it more challenging than it should have been, but since we were already starting from 11,000ft in the morning, it wasn't that bad.
Jennifer was also excited because this is when we started going beyond where she had to turn back last time: new terrain for both of us.

All that pack carrying must have been tiring :)

Day 4: Pincho Pass

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/13	2.2mph	1.3mph	11.86mi	5H23	9H30	116bpm	152pbm	+3800ft/-4642ft	8474ft/12135ft	1465

Day 4 was Pincho Pass, a mere 30 feet higher than Mather Pass, nothing to see here, move along :)
It was just one of those "go down forever" on dicy terrain. I was actually slower than when going uphill because the weight on my back made it hard to jump those big steps without sliding and falling on the loose gravel, but going down didn't take as much energy. At least, once all the way down, we were rewarded by the suspension bridge, but it also meant we'd have to climb all that back up.
This is also the first night that we entered bear country (as in more numerous and smarted/more motivated bears). Thanks to my GPS, I had a list of all bearboxes in the area. For some reason, everyone stopped/stayed at Dollar Lake and was crowded together with no bear box, and we had a huge camp site at Arrowhead lake with our own private bear box.
Incidently, it's also the night where I heard (but never saw) a bear going around our site, so we locked everything up in the bear box and the bear probably got tired and went to check all the fresh and tasty scouts at Dollar Lake :)

The biggest and nicest bridge on the JMT

Day 5: Glen Pass

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/14	2.0mph	1.2mph	10.92mi	5H30	8H28	111bpm	147pbm	+4144ft/-3923ft	9478ft/120004ft	1404

Day 5 was Glen Pass, a nice long climb up the face of the mountain, and the terrain continued on top of the ridge for a nice view.
On the other side of the peak, we got to meet the some CCC guys (California Conservation Corp) who were trying to even out some really big and jagged steps.
We again scored huge camp site with bear box that night. It was great to have the GPS and know exactly where to go.

Day 6: Forrester Pass

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/15	2.3mph	1.4mph	14.08mi	6H02	9H38	115bpm	149pbm	+4604ft/-4377ft	10308ft/13208ft	1727

Day 6 was Forrester Pass, our highest pass yet at 13,120ft. By then, things were definitely getting easier for me due to reduced weight, but poor Jennifer was still lugging the same 25lbs+water. She did a good job getting up though, and on the way, we got to see and touch our first glacier on the way (although what was left of it was fast melting). On top, we met a funny guy who pulled out a budweiser from his pack and lit up a smoke to celebrate his climb: he was doing portion of the trail to Whitney and back as a bet.
On the way down from there, we saw the cutest fluffy furry mouse ever, that thing was to die for :) and we pressed on down to the Valley of Tyndall Creek to make it to the 3rd bear box waypoint I had, and due to some good hiking speeds from poor Jennifer who was suffering from poor digestion of those Pemmican bars (those things are really tough to eat and digest), we made it to our next waypoint and another nice and big camp with bear box (Wallace Creek), although this was the first night we actually had to share the camp site with other folks, but considering that was the only night we had to do so, it really wasn't that bad.

This overgrown ant with wings was carrying that huge worm as food






Top of Forrester Pass







Oh Damn, you're so cute :)



There were lots of old twirled trees, which we fond out were twirled by wind over hundreds of years

Day 7: Guitar Lake

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/16	2.1mph	1.1mph	08.07mi	3H54	7H15	107bpm	144pbm	+4324ft/-2565ft	10262ft/12240ft	1039

After a long hike on Day 6 to make it to the next bear box and not lose 4 miles by stopping at the previous one, day 7 was a nice and easy hike to Guitar Lake where most people stop overnight before climbing Whitney the next day.
This one of the days where Garmin selling 24K topo data version 3 that just came out, showed that they are still using data that is 15 to 20 years old in point. The JMT has been rerouted in several places, and the GPS was still showing a very old and obsolete route. Bad Garmin!
We stopped at the Crabtree ranger station on the way to get some wag bags (their container was empty) and chat with the ranger there, and got to Guitar Lake quite early. Jennifer and I agreed that we should just fill up on water (we had 8-9l carrying capacity) and continue on to a dry camp 600ft higher 1.5 miles further, putting us closer to the peak for the next morning, and giving us a nice quiet spot just for us.
We still had time left over to lounge around for the first time. It was quite nice to do so for our first time :)

Guitar Lake was indeed shaped like a Guitar (see the upper right of the picture)



There were no trees to tie the ursacks to, but I found some fused rocks that I was able to use as an anchor point



Nice and quiet, and great sunset

Day 8: Mt Whitney

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/17	2.1mph	1.4mph	14.10mi	5H35	9H49	115bpm	147pbm	+4453ft/-7468ft	8366ft/14514ft	1532

Day 8 ended up being our last day. We got up at 6, and were on the trail by 08:00. That said, by then already 10 people had passed our position. Some got up as early at 04:30 and started in the dark...
Either way, it's not like it was a race, we got up with plenty of time to spare. At the trail junction around 13,000ft, we dropped our packs and I started going up pretty fast without all that weight on my back. I had to turn around and make sure I wasn't leaving Jennifer too far behind :)
As the average heart rate per day trend showed, my body had been getting used to both the altitude and the exercise, so climbing what was left of Whitney when I only had my fanny pack and some water, was a true piece of cake.
After a lunch at the top and some pictures, Jennifer and I started heading down. My GPS made it clear that by having left the top around noon, we would make it to the exit that day, so that helped us getting down at a good pace. We were happy to reach trail camp after 3 miles of switchbacks downhill though because our 8 litres of water from the previous day were almost gone (with the dry camping and the total absence of water).
A few hours, and many many switchbacks later, we made it to the bottom and I was able to get a couple of bars on my cell phone so that our driver from Lonepine had started coming up and met us at the trailhead 18:00 to get us back to Bishop. By 20:30, we were showered with fresh clothes and enjoying Sushi in Bishop. That was quite nice :)

One of 'dem crazy trailrunners :)



The little hut at the top of Whitney









11 miles of switchbacks down





Finally, we made it to the end!

Conclusion

It was nice to finish the hike, I know Jennifer was ecstatic to have finished the trail she started and despite some problems digesting the food we had, and feet issues (same for me, my two little toes got pretty badly mushed due to my feet being too wide, even for wide boots), we did pretty well on the trail.
She lost a couple of pounds, I lost 4 to 5 (although I'm regaining them quickly :) ), and we were happy to make it back to civilization with lots of pictures and the experience of this long trip.
For the rest, you can look at all the pictures of this hike from the John Muir Trail from Bishop to Mt Whitney

Labels: hiking