Marc's Public Blog - Hiking

Northern Portion of Lost Coast Trail

2008-07-05T14:22:00Z

(note that all the pictures below are georeferenced. You can click on them to see where they were on the hike)

Things to know / GPS download of north section of the Lost Coast Trail

The report below contains details on backpacking on the northern portion of Lost Coast Trail, and worrying about portions that can be impassable at high tide (it's actually not that bad most times, details below), and also contains the only detailed GPS track with both a trail and a route you can use in your GPS, along with all the creeks and campsites that I could see, and which points of the trail can be tough to cross on a high high tide). For one, you not only want to have the tide table from the BLM rangers, but also remember to apply the time offset for Shelter Cove, and note if the high tide is a high high or a low high (depending on the moon, there could be a difference of several feet in the high tide, and that will make a difference later).
After you read the BLM info on hiking the LCT, you'll know that you need a bear container, and that fresh water is not much of a worry. There are numerous major streams to cross (i.e. they don't dry out), and many smaller ones that aren't on the map, but that I marked as waypoints in the map below (note that obviously those could potentially go dry, but again there is plenty of water on the route, so you really shouldn't run dry unless you really try to prove me wrong :) ).
While I recommend you read the portions below on how to deal with tides, and which exact points are tricky and where you could get trapped vs which portions are actually mostly safe to cross at high tide, you can get the GPX data file of the north portion of the lost cost trail used for the track shown below.

Planning, and starting from Mattole

It had been almost a year since Jennifer and I went backpacking. Eh, it took about 9 months for my toenails to regrow after the JMT trip :)
After Jennifer told me about doign the Lost Coast Trail, we studied which portion would make sense to do. We discounted the south portion (south of Shelter Cove) as we heard from a ranger the trail was somewhat overgrown and tick infested (with lyme disease as a bonus), so we concentrated on the Northern portion, which is all beach or trails by the beach.

Given that, we flew to the small Shelter Cove airport (which is actually not a piece of cake due to the prevalent overcast/fog, see my flying blog for details ), and got a ride to the trailhead at Mattole thanks to Sherren's shuttle service (she's great, she and her driver will go out of their way to match your schedule and get you where you need to, when you need to, in a van of up to 6 people). We ended up landing on July 2nd at 18:45, through a small hole in the ground fog, and she picked us up and drove us to the trailhead.
The Mattole trailhead has car camping with toilets, water, and bear proof trash (although no bear boxes, but you are required to carry a bear proof container anyway). There are plenty of campsites to be had, so it's fine to arrive even after sunset.
The next morning, we went to the trailhead and started our beach hike.

bunny was enjoying something to eat around our camp

First tide crossing point

Look for the 'LowTide Cross 1' point in the map above, and while we crossed it 2h from high tide, it felt like we had plenty of room left. This was due to the fact that while I had very inconvenient high tide times (12:45 on the first day, and 13:30 on the second day), those were fortunately low high tides, meaning that even at peak tide the water wasn't as far as it could be at other times.
My take on it was that you can likely cross this point just about any time outside of the peak of a high high tide. Quite frankly, we crossed the spot not that far from high tide and didn't even notice it was a tough spot until after we crossed it.

Cabins, Punta Gorda Lighthouse, Sea Lions

Once we crossed the first point, we passed one of the few cabins you see on the trail (they are all private, please do not tresspass, we the exception of a very broken down one that I marked on the map and that you could use if you're not afraid it's going to collapse on you ;) ).

Soft Sand, nice trail, or rocks, rocks, and more rocks...

About one third of the trail is a nice path that's easy to walk on (easy to average 3-3.5mph on it), about one third is beach hiking, where you'll get slowed down to 2mph or less depending on the sand (try to walk on the wet sand, but that also means you need to watch for the occasional sneaky wave that'll get your boots and socks wet if you don't see it in time), and the last third is various kinds of rocks from pebbles to boulders.
I first wondered if it made sense to do the hike in tevas for the stream crossings, but then realized that you can cross all the streams without ever getting your socks wet (they're not deep and/or have a tree trunk or rock cross point), and you really want to cross the boulder sections with good sturdy hiking boots.

Jennifer wasn't enjoying the rocks much, tricky for her balance

High tide section #2

The second high tide restricted section is depicted as several miles, and indeed, some portions of it are tricky or not doable depending on how high the high tide is. Look for the 'LowTide Cross2a Hard Bypass' waypoint above to hike up the hill for a section that just isn't doable even during mid tide (low tide only), while the rest we were able to cross from high tide to 2h after high tide.
If you are trying to squeeze by during a rising high tide, which isn't recommended, there are a few spots where you could wait the tide out if you realize you can't proceed anymore, but there are other spots where you may get trapped and very wet at best. Not a good idea to push your luck during a rising high high tide.
'Lowtide Cross 2b' was actually the hardest spot for us 1h after high tide, you had to time a quick cross on slippery boulders between two waves. I made it without getting wet, but Jennifer got stuck on a rock and splashed by a wave before she was able to get out. Unfortunately, she had to switch to tevas to get her socks and boots dry after that, which was very inconvenient for the upcoming boulder sections.

I was able to watch and time the waves, but Jennifer wasn't confident about doing that and unfortunately got splashed there when trying to cross after me

one of the many campsites made out of driftwood (all marked in my GPS trail)

we couldn't quite figure out what this was: a fish? baby dolphin? other?

rocks, rocks, and more rocks, Jennifer is hating it with tevas

Stopping for the night at Big Creek

Because we had been slowed down due to the soft sand, boulders, and then Jennifer's problems with her wet socks/boots, and then having to hike in tevas on boulders, while we were hoping to get to Big Flat Creek (just before the second potentially impassable at high tide section), we stopped 3 miles earlier at Big Creek. It was actually quite a nice sheltered spot, which which we got a inkling of a sunset (the weather was overcast/foggy 90% of the time we were there).

Seagulls liked to hang out by estuaries, probably because they find small fresh water fish?

Day 1 totals were 13.4 miles, moving average of 2.6mph and full day average of 1.2mph only.

Day 2: more beach, more rocks, more fog/overcast, and low tide section 3

After 3 reasonably easy miles to reach Big Flat creek, we headed on towards the low tide only section, against a rising tide that was just 3h from being full. I need to repeat here that this is not a grand idea per se. It turns out that going south is actually not as bad as the worst section is right at the beginning (pictures below), but be wary during a high high tide and know that some extended sections have no escape routes until you reach the next creek crossing (and you can't hike up the steep walls looking for temporary shelter).
Luckily for us the worst part was the first hour, and as the tide rose, we were on the somewhat easier sections that were doable on our low high tide. Anything south of 'LowTide Cross3a' isn't too bad in my opinion, even during a high tide (of course, if you get swept up by the waves because of this, and you are impolite enough to only get seriously injured but not killed, you can't come back and sue me on this :) ).

I actually didn't mind them too much since I enjoy the challenge, but they did slow me down, and Jennifer too since her heels and boots were bothering her

Hello little guy :) (he was checking us out)

Black Sand Beach and back to shelter cove

And soon after leaving the low tide zone, we ended up on Black Sand Beach for the last few miles to the Shelter Cove parking lot, where we were driven by two kind souls back to the runway.
Day 2 totals were: 11.2miles, a moving average of 2.5mph and a day average with all breaks of 1.5mph.

and we celebrated by having juicy buggers at the Counter in Palo Alto after a quick flight home :)

You can find all the pictures from the Northern Portion of the Lost Coast Trail .

2007/08/10-17: John Muir Trail from Bishop Pass to Mt Whitney

2007-08-19T04:29:00Z

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 nor I had much spare fat to burn, so we couldn't go too low on the calories. I figured we had to eat 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), to 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 third 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

you can click pictures or waypoint on the google map, switch from terrain mode to satellite or mytopo. You can also click on all the pictures below to see where they are on the map

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

2007/07/04-06: Devil Postpile/Red Maedows to Tuolume Maedows

2007-07-07T11:55:00Z

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 )

2007/05/26-28: Hiking Henry Coe State Park

2007-05-29T14:59:00Z

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 to see what I mean)

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...

Monterey Day 3: Point Lobos Hiking

2006-11-27T13:25:00Z

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