Trip
I took an amazing hiking trip in the Sierra Nevada mountain range this past weekend to celebrate Ben's birthday. We drove to about 7,600 feet, hiked up through a mountain pass at about 11,600 feet, and then camped for two days just below the pass by a mountain lake at about 10,600 feet. I think it was the most physically strenuous thing I've ever done in my life.
The hike itself was only about 3 miles, as the crow flies, but the trails, where there were trails, constantly wiggled back and forth, and, as Ben predicted, the hike involved about 5,000 feet of changes in elevation, or nearly a mile.
For those who are curious, we started from a point called Mineral King and hiked into Sequoia National Forest, through Glacier Pass, and camped by Spring Lake.
I wrote a letter to Wolfgang (about 26 pages, and, in keeping with tradition, containing a detailed description of how a CRT works). I learned a lot about myself on that trip.
Other items [from among his memories] were put in order so that they established a natural progression. [...] The further the structure grew, and the more coherent, the more significant new items became and the easier it was to fit them in.(Asimov, "Lest We Remember", in The Winds of Change ... And Other Stories, p. 186)
My horrible joke:
"Forsan et hike olim meminisse iuvabit."
My letter suggests that we camped at 36 deg 28.208' N, 118 deg 33.687' W (WGS84). Yes, we had a GPS with us. You can get a rough look at that neighborhood using TerraServer; they also have the corresponding site in an old USGS topo map, on which you can clearly see Spring Lake, the location of our campsite.
