June 5th, 2016
Miles Hiked: 20 + 2
Total Miles: 640
Start Location: Mile 724
End Location: Murkry Pass Mile 744 to Horshoe Meadow
End Location GPS: 36.42976, -118.16566
Another beautiful day hiking through the South Sierra en route to higher elevations. We had talked about maybe going into the town of Lone Pine today since we haven’t had a true town stop in a while, and we were quite tired from everything that had happened during the past week.
We made a final decision at lunch and decided to exit via a 1.7 mile spur trail that went to Horshoe Meadows campground. We arrived at the campground around 5:30 and were able to snag a ride down the long windy road to Lone Pine by a very nice gentleman named Peter. He was heading down to the valley to get some shots of the Milky Way Galaxy later this evening.
Peter was a great tour guide as he pointed out bits and pieces of interesting knowledge about the valley and the Alabama Hills, which are famous for being in a lot of western movies. He was in the area for a week volunteering at the film museum in Lone Pine and invited us to come by tommorrow to check it out, which I think we will.
We are going to take a day off here tommorrow and relax, something that we both really need before heading back up into the Sierra and tackling Mt. Whitney (14,000+ feet) and Forester Pass (13,000+ feet).
We got really nice views today of where we are going, and the snow doesn’t look all that bad. A lot has melted this past week with the heatwave so hopefully it won’t be too big of an issue when we head back out on Tuesday.
Dominick, good luck to you guys. I’ve been following you on your blog. Nice Pictures. I’d like to do what you guys are doing someday.