Just a quick update here. Yesterday, ee left Olancha just after 5am to ride the 25 miles to Lone Pine to catch the bus to Bishop. Really glad we made that decision to avoid the heat. In Bishop, we did some errands and then headed out to an amazing campground – Pleasant Valley – on the rushing Owens river. The presence of water makes such a difference! Even though it was probably pushing 100 degrees, it doesn’t matter when you have a cool river and shade at your campsite. The guy next to us gave us freshly caught trout for dinner!
This morning, we had a beautiful rude through the owens river canyon before we began a pretty steep, but very scenic, 3000 foot climb up the Sherwin grade. Luckily, there was another creek to jump into about halfway up. At the top of the climb, we were clearly in a different environment – Aspen, pines, many babbling creeks, and so many wide – open mountain vistas! And the temperature dropped into the low 80s. Along the way, we took a slight detour to go to an awesome hot spring (which had been unthinkable during the heat of the previous several days). Now we’re camped at mammoth lakes, where it’s going down to the low 50s tonight! Tomorrow, we meet Morgan in Lee vining, and possibly began to climb tioga pass.