Walter and I pose at the trailhead sign before heading up the Pinnacles Trail.

Continues from “First Time on Lost Mine”

The little REI-branded thermometer read 22 degrees when I woke up last Monday morning. It didn’t seem that cold — my water bottle wasn’t frozen, for example — but seeing it that low gave me a chill. According to the park service, the low that morning was 39 at the Basin weather station, probably a couple of degrees colder in the campground, where colder air settles. It was the first of two malfunctioning devices this day.

The other was my Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx, which had already thrown a temper tantrum the day before thanks to an apparently corrupted data card. Of course, all my waypoints, routes, and other information for the upcoming Mesa de Anguila hike was on that card. The GPS unit recorded exactly 0.88km of our hike on this day before shutting itself down. It wasn’t needed for this portion of the trip as I’m intimately familiar with the trails in these mountains. I didn’t even bring a map.

After the buffet breakfast at the Lodge — greatly improved in quality from last time — we broke camp and put everything we needed in our backpacks. On the drive up to the trailhead, Walter said he was having “butterflies” before his first significant backpacking trek. “Those are good to have,” I said. We got off to a late start, mostly due to my own disorganization, and hit the trail at 11 a.m. I normally take a short cut or two to cut off a little distance on the Pinnacles Trail but this time wanted Walter to experience the whole trail, from the trailhead sign on.

In about 30 minutes, we had reached Juniper Flat and snapped photos of the iconic dead tree in a grassy meadow beneath Emory Peak.
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