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Day 24: Thu Aug 14, 1997

Trail map from Trail Camp to Outpost Camp
Trail map from Outpost Camp to Whitney Portal

When I got outside the tent I found some small chunks of ice on it from our hail/rain storm of the evening before. I shook the tent off as best I could. It was nice outside, the sky was perfectly clear and the sun was fairly warm. There was a light breeze. I asked Sharleen if she wanted anything cooked on the stove, she said she wasn't very hungry and not to cook anything so I packed it up. After she was dressed I took the cover off the tent (it's just mesh beneath) and took it over to the large rock to dry off. I turned it several times while packing everything else. Sharleen packed up stuff inside the tent, stuffed the sleeping bags into their stuff sacks, and rolled the self-inflating mats. They inflate easy enough, but it would be nice if they were also self deflating, it takes a bit of effort to get them rolled up, but they sure work well. We saw Ron Smith and his group packing up their stuff and briefly talked to them. We laid everything out on the big rock and organized it into the backpacks. We ate some snacks, nuts, dates, and Cliff Bars, I couldn't get Sharlen to eat enough. There was no trouble getting the birds to eat.

We finally took off and headed down the mountain. Sharleen had said the pack bothered her so I had put as much of the heavy stuff in my pack as would fit. I had forgotten the many steps between Trail Camp and Outpost Camp, but I felt them on the way down. It was good hiking weather and scenic, but I took no pictures on the way down. Somewhere along the way I discovered I didn't have my hiking socks on. I had slept in the liners, thin white socks, and had just put my boots on to go to the latrine. Knowing the socks were missing made the trail seem a bit harder. When we got down to Outpost Camp we stopped for a break and I soaked my feet in the ice cold stream and left them air dry, then put on new liners and socks. Felt like new feet, for awhile. We saw Mike and Susan at Outpost Camp, Susan said they were heading down shortly. They ended up taking off just before us, I tried to catch up but couldn't keep Sharleen moving fast enough. We finally saw their packs on rocks at the top of the trail down to Lone Pine Lake, so took ours off and went down to see them. We met them coming up and chatted for awhile and made arrangements to possibly get together for a meal after we got down. From Lone Pine Lake down, Mike took off pretty fast, but Susan, I, and Sharleen hiked together for awhile and Susan and I chatted about computers. Sharleen and I took a break and Susan headed on down. We saw them again way ahead, on the trail around the curve of the mountain. They took a short break and I took a picture of them on the trail.

Mike and Susan Delaune of Salem Oregon on the trail ahead of us descending.

Sharleen coming around the last curve at the bottom of the trail.

We finally got back to Whitney Portal, hiked straight to the car in the overflow parking lot. We aired it out as we loaded in our packs, then drove up to the Whitney Portal Store and parked. Mike and Susan were cooling off at a table outside with some other people we recognized from the trail. We went in and Sharleen asked if they had any fruit juice. The guy showed us what they had , Sharleen asked if it had preservatives, he said it was probably full of all kinds of bad stuff, he was a good salesman. He was also a former map maker so we had a good chat. [After we got back from the trip he called me at work, thinking I had a stash of maps with contours in feet instead of meters. I told him I only had one set of maps of the area].

I drove down to town, stopped at the restaurant to get some vegeburgers and salads, took a long long time, I waited in the hot car. Sharleen finally brought the food out and we went to check in the motel. That took a while too, we got the same room as before. Ate our burgers and I checked my email. Spent a long time on the email, I had 165 copies of a junk email that had been coming in from the Sunday before (and still is). When I finally got off and plugged the phone back in we didn't have any messages from Mike and Susan, we didn't go out after that, just took it easy. Finally got a shower, that was nice.

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