Bishop

We've made it to Bishop everybody! And we're staying here until the fourth of July.

To touch up on Lone Pine: This town was awesome and is apparently movie-making central. A piece of everything from Star Wars to Gladiator to Django was filmed here. We got to visit the music history museum and it was amazingly fun.

We spent the night in the hiker-approved baseball dugout directly behind the police station

Movie Museum

 

After spending two more days than planned in this small awesome town, we finally hit the trail again.

Hitching back up to the trail

I got a stove! I can cook things now yay!

 This was the first lake we saw over 11,000 ft elevation (so cool!) It was crazy though because we were awoken by a pack of coyotes in the middle of the night.

We are officially out of the desert

Smile! :)

 Then we decided to climb Mt. Whitney ...the highest mountain in the continental United States! Which, by the way, Snake Eyes loved and bounded up like he was part billy goat while I thought I was fighting altitude sickness like a crazy person. It's okay though because we both made it no problem!

Takin' a break

Panoramic View From Whitney

 

 After that we descended and prepared fopr the next peak, Forster Pass, which is the highest peak that is part of the official PCT (13,200 ft).

Nick Using his no-cook heating kit

Once we got over Forester we realized that we were gorging our food like never before (elevation and mountain climbing requires a lot of calories y'all!) So we decided to hike into the town of independence which was a few days before Bishop (our planned stop). The night before we hiked the pass to the road though we camped with two hikers who were doing the John Muir Trail (which overlaps the PCT) and were telling them how we only had enough food for the morning and kind of lunch of the next days 8 mile trek uphill to a road with no guaranteed hitch into town. So, needless to say, we woke up the next morning with some food left on top of my bear vault and a note that read, "Starving is no fun. Happy Trails" written on toilet paper. The love and sense of community on the trail never ceases to amaze me.

Food left by friends