• Click here to see Greg's pictures.
• Click here to see Larry's pictures.
• Click one of the following links for short movies: [ Snow in August, Honeymoon Lake, Stream above Rovana, Down Switchbacks, Shady Finish into Rovana, View of Sierras from White Mountains, Bristlecone Pines]

While this event is usually held on Labor Day weekend, scheduling conflicts dictated otherwise (lots of 100 mile races happening for the Bishop crowd this fall). So rather than cancel, they held it in early August. Not a problem temperature-wise, as we were never below 7,500' over all three days.

Mark & Patty Giebel, Mark Penn, Larry Dennert and I came up from Los Angeles and met up with the usual suspects from Bishop. We did three days of running:

• Day 1 (morning): Warm up run/walk to Lake Sabrina, then back down a little and over to North Lake and down a single track, across a stream, and down to Cardinal Village for breakfast. About 6 miles.
• Day 1 (afternoon): Start near Willow Camp on the road going up to South Lake. West past the Tyee Lakes, up and over Table Mountain, then follow the washed out trail down to George Lake. Continue down to Lake Sabrina and finish up at Sabrina Basin. About 10 miles.
• Day 2: North Lake to Piute Pass, through the Humphreys Basin. Turn north into Hutchison Meadow, up over Pine Creek Pass and down into Pine Creek, down past the Rowana Tungsten Mine and end at the pack mule station at Rowana. About 26 miles. (A more stalwart group did a 100k loop (62 miles) through Evolution Valley, anywhere from 14-20 hours worth of running/hiking.)
• Day 3: White Mountain Research Station (~12,500') to the top of White Mountain (~14,250'), third highest peak in California, then back down. Mostly hiking on the way up, but a good amount of running coming back down. About 10 miles.

This year's festivities started out at the Emerson's, Larry & Linda. We met Friday afternoon and carpooled a couple vehicles up to Lake Sabrina, then headed over toward Tyee Lakes. The trip up and over was a good climb, starting at 9000' out of the car. Table Mountain was a beautiful Eastern Sierra table top, with rocks worn smooth from the elements. About halfway through the run, we started to get rumbles and shakes or thunder, and watched several lightning strikes crack down on the perimeter of the Sabrina Basin. We got a little rain, but no worse for wear, and a nice show from Mother Nature.

Early for breakfast at the Giebels', with another great feast. For we slower runners, Saturday's run was a repeat of last year's run across the Sierra's (I've heard locals also call this run the 'Sky Maraton', which is an apt title). Again, a high start (around 9300') right from the North Lake parking lot, over two passes of 11,000' (Piute and Pine), then a huge accordion of switchbacks, losing about 2500' in 3 or 4 miles on the way down into Rovana. Linda Emerson picked up a carload of sweaty, grimy runners for this point to point run. Saturday night dinner at my favorite, Las Palmas!

On Sunday, we met early in town for coffee and bagels at the Great Basin Bakery. The White Mountain Research Station was having its open house, so all those who were recovered enough from the previous two days met early, and we drove to the other side of the 395 and up to the station. The open house lets visitors drive all way up to the Barcroft Station, which is a mile or two closer than the usual stop. The open house lets visitors see the inner workings of the station. Even though we were pretty tuckered, we all managed to make it up to the summit in less than two hours (not bad for altitude!) and most of us ran back down. Mark and I had to hold Patty back to make sure she didn't push too hard.

On the way back down we stopped at the Bristlecone Pine preserve and took lots of pictures of the oldest living things on the planet (some over 3000 years old!). Phill's mini-van (I should say Brenda's!) got a six-inch nail in the tire on the way back down, but between the 12 of us, we were able to change it. After a quick clean up, Mark & Larry had to head back to Los Angeles, but everyone else was able to head over to Phill & Brenda Kiddoo's for a great open-pit BBQ!

Running with the group up in Bishop is always great fun, and I don't know where any concentration of such quality runners (and quality people!) exists. It must be something about having the Sierras in your back yard.

Big thanks to all our hosts, and looking forward to next year!