Big Pothole Lake
I was a bit concerned about today’s logistics and timing, but it turns out that everything went quite smoothly. We left Bishop at about 9 am and drove down to Lone Pine to pick up our permit at the Inyo National Forest visitor’s center. After taking possession of our Wag Bags we drove up to Whitney Portal where we parked the Prius and met our shuttle service. While we waited we had one of the well-known burgers, but I was most impressed with the fries. Mmm.
Our shuttle was there on time and drove us up to Onion Valley. By 1:15 we were on the trail and heading up to Kearsarge Pass. We continued over the pass and past the lakes to where the trail connected to the John Muir Trail. Home again! We turned south on the JMT and headed down into Vidette Meadow where we camped for the night. This was the only place where I was nervous about bears, but nothing bothered us or our food all night.
This was Dave’s first day on the trail but he kept up with me. 🙂
As a side note, I should mention that I skipped the stretch of the John Muir Trail between Piute and Kearsage because I hiked it last year. I would have loved to have done it again, but I chose to budget my vacation time this summer on places I hadn’t yet been, like the Yosemite High Passes Loop. Now that I’ve seen the whole JMT I realize that someday I want to take the time to do the whole thing beginning to end, but this year it wasn’t in the cards.
This day’s stats:
- Mileage: 8.12 mi
- Ascending: 2733 ft
- Descending: 2401 ft
- Cumulative Mileage: 120.56 mi
- Cumulative Ascending: 22,424 ft
- Cumulative Descending: 21,332 ft
