Well, Tuesday went to plan: we got up to Bishop around 3:30 and got our permit in short order. After a walk across the street to grab some chili cheese bread, we then headed up to South Lake to go for a short hike. I was hoping we'd be able to get up to one of the lakes on the way up to Bishop Pass. But we only started hiking around 5:15, so when we had not reached the lake by 6:30 we turned around. I had no desire to be out after dark. We headed back down to the car and went to go find a place to camp. We drove over to the Buttermilks and set up camp after a brief walk around the boulders.
The night was very nice, warm and still and I slept well until around 2:30am. And then the wind started....
We spent a restless night until the light of damn began to grow. The wind never abated and made the tent very loud. Watson did rather well with all the noise and failed to freak out as Josh sort of feared. There was some really nice light on the surrounding mountains, however this was largely due to the very ominous clouds looming over the high country.
We were feeling rather doubtful about the weather and decided to drive into Bishop to see if we could find a weather forecast. I was fully prepared to hike around in the rain, but I didn't really want to, especially with the dog. We failed to find a forecast in Bishop perhaps because it was only 6am. So we decide to bag our plans for overnight hiking and instead head up to Mono Lake and check that out since Josh had never seen it before. Mono Lake was just as interesting as it ever is although the cloud cover rendered the light a bit too poor for good photography.
The wind kept up the whole day and at the Mono Lake visitor center Josh heard that there would be gust of up to 70mph up in the high country. This made our decision to head back to LA very easy. We went to the Tioga Gas Mart for some excellent lunch food to fuel us for the drive home. We stopped in Bishop again on the way south for some gas and a bakery visit. And then we drove back to LA fighting wind gusts the whole way. It was crazy how windy it was all the way from Bishop to Palmdale.
Yesterday, Josh and I hung out and made plans for my birthday on Saturday. We are going to go to a Dodger's game and then have a steak dinner with some awesome beers that we have been saving up. In the evening, we went shopping for food for Saturday, watched the first game of the NBA finals and then organized our current store of beer, aka "the cellar", aka "Josh's closet".
Today, I am going to head back to Stoney Point for some more bouldering to try to get a little bit more exercise than I have been getting recently. I should probably go for a run sometime soon also so that I don't get to weak in the legs. I have big plans for August that depend on lots of walking. In fact I will be detailing my plans very soon in this space.
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