Goal for the day: Shower, real food, sleep in a real bed, Diet Coke, hot tub, jump in cold pool (DEFINITELY not in that order)

So, I was not too much of a rush this morning, but just need to enjoy the colors from the sunrise as I ate breakfast and then packed my gear. If this was just a resupply stop in Horseshoe Meadows, I would have left my tent up and only taken what I needed down into the meadow. As it was, I took my full pack. Not a problem on the descent, but would slow me down on the re-climb.

But that wasn’t for at least a day (maybe two if I decided to stay in Lone Pine for 2 nights).

I made my towards Trail Pass and passed the Mulkey Pass Trail that also went down to the meadow. But it was heavily used and usually required some bushwhacking once you hit the meadow. Better to stick to the main trail.

It wasn’t a long hike, but was enjoyable with some nice views down to Mulkey Meadow.

I got to the trail junction and started down Trail Pass Trail (sounds odd to type that).

I didn’t expect any surprises on this trail, but got one since I wasn’t paying enough attention to the trail. I ended up continuing straight on the trail and ended up on a connector trail that went over to Mulkey Pass Trail.

Fortunately, I caught myself after a hundred feet or so and backed up and found the correct downward trail.

Got down to Horseshoe Meadows and enjoyed the 360 degree view down there and I headed towards the trailhead.

I reached the trailhead and retrieved my resupply bucket from the bear boxes there where I had left it (after looking in two other boxes that I had though I left it in).

My shuttle driver was already there, having dropped someone else off at the trail head.

On the way down, I got a cell signal and was checking for hotel availability and for early check-ins (it would only be 10am by the time I got to Lone Pine). The Dow Villa only had a Historic Hotel room available that night. Unfortunately, the ‘Historic Hotel’ rooms didn’t have individual air conditioning units like their motel rooms did.

While I would have preferred a full AC room, it was more convenient to stay at the Dow Villa in the center of town. My Jeep was still up at Onion Valley and I decided I didn’t need to go get it for this Zero Day as long as I could walk everywhere I needed to go to. The Dow Villa also had a cool pool and a hot tub.

It had actually cooled down in Lone Pine from before my hike started. Meaning it was a little below 100 instead of above 100.

In other words: Still pretty hot. Even with the clouds that covered parts of the town.

But the dark clouds DIRECTLY over Mt Whitney were looking like they were raining down on the west side of the mountains. Seems I did make a good decision to take a break from the trail and hope the bad weather cleared up before I got back on the trail and reach Whitney, but we’ll see what the next couple of days are like.

So, after getting into my room, my first thing to do was to take a long shower. Then, I put on my cleanest set of clothes and my boots and headed to a sport shop a block away.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have any Shoe Goo. They said the hardware store a couple blocks down should have some or one of the other sports shop. Fortunately, I found a tube at the hardware store, plus some more duct tape.

Then it was over to the grocery store for some bottles of Diet Coke (I had already drank the two semi cool Diet Cokes from my resupply bucket) and a couple snacks.

And then I stop at the rock gift shop and bought another of my favorite Mt Whitney T-shirts. Why? The lightweight shirts from my hike were very dirty, sweaty, and smelly. So, if I had to buy a T-shirt to wear for my Zero Day, why not one that I liked?

Back at the hotel, I got a complimentary toothbrush and used it to thoroughly clean the crack in the sole (it was free, so made a good tool to clean out the inside of the crack between the sole and bottom liner of the boot. It was now almost a quarter of the circumference of the sole, but fortunately still seemed to be securely attached on the rear and right side of the boot. After a good cleaning inside and outside, I was happy that the inside still was mostly dry. At least some of the waterproofing was still there.

I left it to dry overnight since applying the Shoe Goo to a wet boot was only going to fail to stick and hold it together. Even got a small fan from the hotel to help dry the boot (although it also cooled the room down a bit too 😀 ).

The primary mission complete for the day, it was time to jump in the nice cold pool! Splash!!

Of course, with the partly cloudy sky, it wasn’t as hot in Lone Pine that afternoon. But it was still nice. Even spent some time int he hot tub to soothe my tired, sore, and achy body, muscles, skin, eyeballs, etc… Yeah, that hit the spot.

On my way back into the hotel, I was surprised, but at the same time NOT that surprised to run into the woman I had kept running into between Walker Pass and Kennedy Meadows: Double Take.

She had a new hiking partner, Grunge Bunny, and both of them had just come down from Horseshoe Meadows for their own Zero Day. And decided to stay at the same hotel.

This was getting a little weird how we kept coming across each other. Then they said they had left Kennedy Meadows 2 days after I did.

That brought me back to reality… Yes, I WAS that slow on the trail. 🙂

I decided to put off my laundry for the next day and some of the other repair tasks I had to do (beyond finishing fixing my shoe), and relax in my room, use the pool and hot tub some more, and had that dinner with REAL food. Ahhh…

Once nice thing about clouds and the mountains (when it wasn’t raining on you) was that clouds tended to enhance sunsets and sunrises. I enjoyed the sunset before heading to that nice real bed.

Goal for the day: Success!

Day 12 – 4.12 miles – 2 hours 15 minutes
PCT section G – 93.2 trail miles out of 115 total miles (does not include the descent to Horseshoe Meadows which is not part of the PCT.

(mileage and time approximate and based on GPS tracks which may not be exact and include diversions from the trail)