High Sierra Topix

I caught lots of fish out of Picket lake and ¨saint¨Diane caught a 16´ fish out the the small lake just above Pickett but this was a looooooong time ago before most of you were backing and many of you were born.

Thank you CC for that additional, and useful info on the fishing.

This may be a good opportunity for a "key exchange" for a point-to-point route, since we would all be the same place the same time period. Something to think about. I am thinking Mineral King-Crescent Meadow; or; Horseshoe Meadow-Shepherd Pass.

Don't get me wrong, Mav. I think it is absolutely marvelous that you are setting up the meet-up. The key phrase in CC's post was "looooooong time ago." Fish don't generally live that long unless restocked or SS.

I'll see how the year plays out and decide. Thanks again for setting the trip.

SSSdave wrote:What would be useful ... would be a sticky associated thread only writable by admins that would contain basic information.

Dave makes a good point - I've got some detailed spreadsheets (Google docs) I could post up if I knew how to publish them directly to HST. As it is, I'll add some links to the public documents for now (see below).

I keep these detailed spreadsheets for both planning purposes and actual records. If you've ever seen me on the trail at major waypoints, I've got my micro-pencil out jotting down my actual times. My routes are typically broken down into 3-4 mile increments - usually notable sections, passes, ridgelines, lakes, etc, noting both elevation gain (highlighted in dark grey)/loss, etc.

With practice - and an honest assessment - I've found that I've gotten pretty accurate at predicting my own times/ability. Personally, this provides a crucial advantage for trip planning, since I can with moderately high confidence plot out a course and come fairly close to matching the predicted times.

Kearsage/Forester/Whitney:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub ... utput=html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Shepherd/Wales:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub ... utput=html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

New Army/Langley/Crabtree/Whitney:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub ... utput=html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

GTW/Kern/Cottonwood:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub ... utput=html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

excel spreadsheets are postable on this site. just tested it. upload attachment and select the file.

Electra wrote:
I am hoping to make it this year.

Cool Dan, looking forwards to seeing you out there.

Thanks, Maverick, for doing this. It so happens at this moment, my two main plans for next summer are either Denali at the end of July/early August or a return to Kaweah Basin and the Picket Creek lake.

For the latter, the current rough itinerary is going out of Mineral King and doing a semi-loop by going over Franklin Pass, down to Kern Canyon, up to Junction Meadow, up to Picket Creek Lake, Kaweah Basin, and return by Kern Canyon, Big Arroyo, Little Five Lakes, Glacier Pass, and back to Mineral King. I’m also curious if anyone is considering exiting Kaweah Basin via Red Spur and down to Big Arroyo.

I should have a better idea in December since we need to reserve Denali camping soon after December 1. Then there’s whether the dates of HST meet-up will be good for work and family. Right now, the dates look good.

Good stuff Hobbes. You and I have a similar mindset. Checked a few of your mileage points and they are reasonable. Mine tend to closely track those in Wilderness Press because I grew up with their original guide and learned to measure trail mileage reasonably accurately againt their numbers.

The Shepherd Pass trail is however longer than the map shows. Topo maps sometimes have inaccurate trails drawn because in the past they tended to be hand drawn from suspect sources thus not satellite based. That is especially the case where switchbacks route. In this thread I overlayed the satellite map onto the topo. It pretty much matched up to Bob Burd's GPS track. Before doing so I had measured mileage to the pass at exactly 10.0 miles but after adding all the extra switchbacks and then looking at other satellite sections of that trail higher up that didn;t match the map, it was obviously going to actually be at least 12 which Bob substantiated with other info. Someone needs to track the whole route on GPS.

http://www.summitpost.org/phpBB3/post91 ... rd#p910163" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This trip has me dragging several very marked up topos back out of winte hibernation. Will work on this some more in the next month and post a how to thread over in The Campfire.

So much for topos at the moment. Just received an Amazon used book am eagerly digging into tonight, "Fabric of the Cosmos".

Yep, looks like I'm out - I'm spending a week over in the Rubies in July and won't have enough time off for a second extended trip that month.

Have fun, guys.