Marc's Public Blog - Hiking / Backpacking

While I was sick, I used some of the time to learn to use the two GPS I had just bought.
The first one was a hand held GPS, primarily designed for hiking, but which can also be used for biking and other outdoor activities (moving color maps, with altimeter and electronic compass as a backup for GPS data).
The nice thing is that it also supports auto routing, provided you can buy the expensive maps, or get them somehow. It kind of bothered me to pay for those things again since I had already paid for a set for my car.
In the end, I was able to get some older maps to test the functionality, and see if I would really want it on a day to day basis with up to date maps. So far, it looks like even if it wouldn't be your best bet for a car GPS, compared to what's on the market, but it could act as one if you had nothing else (so it's kind of nice as a multi-purpose tool).
While it's nice on the road, or to mark a jump spot in the middle of a snowed in forest so that you can head back to it next time down, it's also nice to graph your course after the fact on a big map on your computer (or even import to Google Earth for some even nicer output)



The other is a Garmin Forerunner 301. It's basically a running/sports GPS with built in heart rate monitor. It's nice for a few reasons:

• you can graph whatever course you ran after the fact (nice when you're off track)
  
• no more do you need to ask "how far did I run/bike anyway"?
  
• what was my running pace over point X, and overall?
  
• how am I doing on this lap compared to last one?
  
• how are my running pace and heart rate affected by my running up or down this path (although GPS derived altitude can be off by 10-50 feet easily)
  

While it does look like an ugly wart, and its GPS reception isn't stellar, nor is its pairing with its heart rate monitor, it's still quite nice. I am however planning on getting the nicer forerunner 305 when it comes out



I however need to state that Mapsource and in general Garmin windows software is totally pathetic. If you do anything it doesn't like, it will crash and never restart until you remove all the software and all the maps, and reinstall them all, which could take about an hour.
Also, it will install some maps on disk, some it will refuse to do so and keep asking for the CD (you need to hack that, but if you mess up, you reinstall everything), and if it gets any read error, it removes the map tile from what's available forever, and there again you need to reinstall everything.
Way to go Garmin!
This gave me a good opportunity to setup vmware (making all that windows crap work under linux) and snapshots so that I can make copies of all of windows and garmin software while it works, and revert to a working snapshot when it blows up instead of reinstalling everything.

Anyway, when all this crap works, you get nice stuff like this graph from my running at the google 5K today, showing heart rate and speed over time



or this for kirkwood:

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 straight line for missing data in the map 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. We ended up completely missisng castle rock and goat rock, but we went back 14 years later to see them :)

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 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...