Today we did two hikes near pinecrest at the Sonora pass and pct trail head and also hiked to blue lake.

We returned back to Pinecrest and enjoyed a visit to with our friend Jim. We hiked in the emmigrant wilderness area near Pinecrest.

The weather cleared on Sunday for an amazing warm fall day in San Francisco. I visited family in San Francisco and walked along the Chrissy field bay front walk.

Over a cooler weekend in late august we visited San Francisco. I was able to connect with my daughter Ellie for several miles of city hikes and Waymo drivers car rides and coffee stops and hidden steep sf trails to underground book stores and alternative film theaters.

Around august 11th three other hikers and friends joined a hike and camp to view the meteor show above the lake in open rocks.

We do nightly bike rides in the evenings with hikers to watch the alpine glow over the lake.

August was filled with a variety of hikers from around the globe and Canada and Europe and U.S. the cabin provided a restful week for one couple after a helicopter ride rescue and several others a full zero in Pinecrest with French toast and pasta meals.

Sailor hiked about 100 miles of pct in northern Oregon in late July.

We spent three days in bend biking and hiking at Paulina lake and visiting family and friends.

We took three days to drive to bend Oregon to visit my daughter molly. A massive wildfire started that day and we spend one day shuttling pct hikers out of the fire area and smoke areas.

We had a 17 mile day to return over bishop pass to southlake where our car was parked.

We spent the night at the bishop hostel.

We did a longer 23 mile day and crossed two 12,000 foot passes to position us closer to our 12,000 foot bishop pass for the next day.

We hiked 17 miles including Glenn pass to position ourselves to do two 12,000 foot passes the following day.

On day 2 we summited forester pass the highest pass on the pct trail and hiked about 20 miles.

We hiked about 20 miles to the trail junction for climbers doing mt Whitney.

For 5 days we hiked about 80 miles of the jmt from cottonwood pass out thru bishop pass, about 96 miles in total.

It took a full afternoon and evening to drive from pinecrest and park the car near bishop and position ourselves on the trail over 100 miles south using 4 hitches mostly on hwy 395.

When we weren’t overly busy with hosting pct hikers we were often hiking around the lake or clearing some of the other local trails.

After a slow start, pct hikers getting to sonora pass are discovering our trail angel cabin in pinecrest. Tonight we are hosting 13 hikers for a total of 15 for dinner. we have given a few rides to and from sonora pass and hung out the cabin and the lake with hikers who end up zeroing (taking a full rest day).

We returned back to Pinecrest late June to enjoy the sierras and the Pinecrest cabin with family, friends and pct hikers. This year we decided to do an upgrade to the upstairs outside porch floor by removing old carpets and replacing with a new carpet flooring and wood trim. We opened up the Sonora pass trail angel cabin offering a place for pct hikers to rest, resupply and get a bed,shower,laundry etc before getting on the trail to continue their trek north toward Canada.

It was an adventure getting back to California using some generous buddy / standby passes from a sailing friend who is a pilot. This was our first time to try and use free flights and it took about 13 hours of getting on a set of flights to go from Atlanta thru Chicago.

We could write a book now on strategies for standby flying that we learned with several almost available flights and then having to find new ones. This is a game of strategy and luck and many conversations with agents.

One of the most unique features of the Appalachian trail is their system of shelters about every 8 miles. Shelters exists on many connecting trails too. Several hundred shelters exist on the hiking trails. Most of the shelters are built and maintained by local hiking clubs. Here is are some pictures of some shelters.