Thus will share a bit of that below on the Taboose Pass region trip I first worked on in 2011. During the 2019 summer I finally completed a similarly worked on a 10-day Shepherd Pass trip that was highly successful photographically that ran like clockwork per planning. After I begin 8k exhibitions, I may make public the larger fancy Upper Kern map I made for that trip. One feature on that map I have not yet incorporated on the Taboose map below are area measurements for all lakes and ponds, a nifty Photoshop process few are aware of.
https://www.davidsenesac.com/2019_Trip_ ... 019-7.html
This first image is a screen capture of one itinerary option Excel sheet that is downsized herein to be barely readable. The sheet is one of 4 itinerary route option sheets that I'll make decisions on depending on conditions, weather, and other factors during that actual trip. I'd like to do the trip in 2021 however as with the Shepard Pass trip I waited a decade before committing, as a septuagenarian, I won't pull the trigger to climb up over 6000 feet carrying 45% of my body weight unless conditions are excellent. The sheet shows the up and down route verticals for each day. Each day section has 4 columns of information, elevation, up, down, and distance. The elevation and dis columns use numbers from 7.5m USGS topo maps. In this era I may use online sites with GPS tracks that are usually more accurate with route and distance than trails shown on USGS maps. Note this zone uses annoying USGS metric maps that required much translations to feet haha. Each location that changes from going up or down has an elevation entry. There are also entries for mile points, trail junctions, and where I leave trails for crosscountry. The up column for cell C6 contains the following relative formula: =IF(B6>B5,B6-B5,"") while the N8 down cell contains: =IF(L7>=L8,L7-L8,""). Translated means if L7 is greater or equal to L8 then N8 equals L7 minus L8 while otherwise is blank. All the up and down column cells contain those same relative formulas so I just need to fill in the elevation numbers using the same template. The dis column is generated manually per topo. The first row also contains bolded codes for when I start a route and when I arrive at a camp destination. For instance em means early morning. The last row contains totaling cells that also use the same formulas for each day section. The two sections at lower right fill using formulas from other cells. For this trip my total vertical came out to be 9,900 feet up and down over 31.8 miles. On two of the days, mileage was only about one mile between camp spots that I refer to as semi-base camping. Most of my camp spots are well away from trails or popular lake shores, where I might efficiently work my tentative tripod spots in whatever zone from.
This next image show downsized for web versions of two of my custom maps. The top map is a 1/3x of the eastern trailhead through Taboose Creek that has inset areas of the road from US395. The bottom map is a 1/6x version of a 4300 by 4600 pixel USGS map I copied as sections from Caltopo and then combined in Photoshop CS6 and customized in various ways. That would be a 21.5 by 23.0 inch print that I would print out at high quality in smaller sections at my nearby FEDEX Office for a few bucks then tape together.
The below image shows the Bench Lake section of that map at 100% pixels. The map has 5 layers, two of which are not shown below as I made them invisible for this web thread. This is at one of the Caltopo default viewing scales of 660 pixels per mile that is similar to viewing a paper USGS 15 minute topographic map.
I've added custom names to various features. Some names relate to nearby USGS elements, others to the shape on topo or Google Earth, some to geology of the area, others just whimsical or whatever. Heck when on group trips, we are always having fun naming features during our adventures. For instance several king this and that names since this is in the SF Kings River canyon. All such text is on my "text" layer. Also on that text layer are the magenta elevations and trail mileage numbers, ie 10 and 11. Have been using more accurate GPS tracks for that versus paper map measurements. Another layer "points" contains magenta mileage dots on trails plus a few other special elements like scale boxes. That yellow box within Bench Lake is a 200 foot square I put on maps to help understand legal distances from lake edges for camp siting.
A layer I made invisible herein is "photo" that contains green camp spot symbols and wingdings3 arrow symbols for tripod locations of which there are 8 directions. Well to show what that is I added the ones for the west end of Bench Lake that also shows a likely day 5 camp zone conveniently near the freshest water around the lake and far from the east end where most groups plop down. On day 6 I'll be investigating the unusual blue mineral colored water in the basin east of Arrow Peak and on my 7th morning will work the east end of Bench lake while on my way east towards my following camp in the Striped Peak cirque. The red arrow is a morning shot while the magenta arrow an afternoon shot. Most of the arrow symbols also have a corresponding Google Earth (GE) jpg images of which I have a few dozen. Although GE images may be severely distorted, they do provide significant information for a photographer one would otherwise waste precious time hunting about when light is good. That is a key reason I can be so efficient capturing strong subjects. Typically before falling asleep each night I'll review the next day's shots making a plan to sequentially ramble through shot locations as quickly as possible during prime time.
For instance B_Bench-10610-NW dot jpg above shows the GE view from 50 feet above the southwest shore. If one is down at the shore level, not much of Cirque Crest is visible in the background because the landscape northwest of the lake rises up as much as 110 feet so the lake is down in a shallow bowl. The northwest arrow is red as a morning direction, however I am more likely to use the tripod location at dusk since the sun at this latitude by the end of July sets about 20 degrees north of due west and that is where the best late dusk sky color will reflect on the lake waters while the rest renders as a silhouette. As my camp spot is about 1/3 mile away, that means returning to camp with my headlamp. Oh what fun!
Note I've added special colors to the topo elevation lines at approximate 10,000, 11,000, 12,000 foot metric lines that adds another element for perceiving a topo. Another layer that I leave invisible as an overlay in registration with the topo is the USGS Mt Pinchot Geological Map. I scaled that map to equal the topo scale. One key reason for an adventure in this area are ancient colorful metamorphic Paleozoic era geology roof pendants. Outside those areas are larger areas of igneous plutons of granodiorite and quartz monzanite. Below is another zone I will spend a night at the upper Woods Creek basin south of Pinchot Pass.
Note the dim pink line near the dashed dim red line that is the Pacific Crest Trail on the topo. The former is a GPS track that isn't where the map trail actually routes. Not only is the route different but one cannot obtain accurate mileages using old USGS trail lines. Note the "Weird Spot" mystery I have an old thread on. I suspect it is Paleozoic marble that the geological map shows is just above on the ridge south as Pzm amidst Pzch calcarious hornfels and biotite shists. Hornfels is a fine grained contact zone metamorphic rocks that have been baked under high temperatures by the heat of pluton igneous intrusions and as a result, have become massive, splintery, extremely hard, and in some cases exceedingly tough and durable.
All these areas were underneath enormous ice age glaciers leaving features we are all familiar with in the High Sierra. One interesting feature is what I labeled "Paleozoic Flats" where the Paleozoic bedrock surface is relatively level and smooth, places to look for interesting rock close-up subjects. My "photo" layer contains 30 GE tripod locations in this section.
