After dropping our rental car off at Horseshoe Meadows and our resupply at Onion Valley, Shannon dropped me off at the Bishop Pass Trailhead and set out to park the car. This year, the Forest Service was repaving the South Lake, so there were a number of parking and traffic restrictions requiring us to park 3 miles down the road at the Tyee Lakes trailhead, or, as the Forest Service encouraged, take the hiker shuttle up from Bishop. Obviously, we weren’t interested in riding the bus for an hour with a bunch of strangers in the midst of the worst global pandemic in a century, so we tried our luck with the new parking rules. The whole project seemed very unnecessary to me, but I didn’t see the road before it was repaved.

I watched lightning flash over the peaks along the crest as Shannon hurried back up the road. We set out just after 5 o’clock as the clouds churned overhead.

Clouds above Hurd Peak from the Bishop Pass Trailhead.

Chocolate Peak from near the trail junction to Chocolate Lakes. The clouds were getting darker as we headed up.

Great views of Bishop Pass and the north face of Mount Goode across Long Lake. We thought about making camp here, but decided to try our luck with the weather and push on a bit farther.

The trail follows the shore of Long Lake quite closely on some spots.

Picture Puzzle high above the Bishop Pass trail. Shortly after this, it started to rain, so we hurriedly made camp at Timberline Lakes. Unfortunately the weather didn’t really clear until well after dark, so we ate some of our lunch supplies for dinner and went to bed early. A short day on the trail, but it was definitely more than I thought I’d be capable of 36 hours earlier.