Woke to the sound of hiking poles hitting rocks. Saw a headlamp shine in the window of the hut. I figured the first of the hikers coming up for sunrise would be here soon so I just got up.

Went outside to tell the hiker that they could come in and it turns out it was Lightning Rod. A few more hikers showed up about 20 minutes later.

There ended up being about ten hikers up there for sunrise, several of which were all huddled in their sleeping bags. Greg, Skinny D, B*Rad and Spoonman all showed up.

I made my morning coffee and watched the sunrise.

Greg and I walked down together for a few miles. He helped me retake one of my 1996 photos on the descent of Whitney. I showed him the photo and he got into "the hunt" for a specific set of boulders turned a certain way. We found them and took the photo.

I was really tired from not sleeping that well the night before. I rested at Guitar Lake a bit and then went down to Upper Crabtree Meadow.

I saw Runs with Elk there and briefly said hello to her, but was in dire need of a nap.

There were a few folks there. After making lunch I ended up falling asleep for five hours. It was long enough that I had to move three times to stay in the shade.

I loaded up on water and as I walked back to where we all were there was a ranger there. He was talking to Greg about the hiker he was looking for. It turns out they were looking for Runs with Elk. Her Spot beacon hadn't been working for a few days and her family was worried. I told him I had seen her around 11:30am.

Greg told the ranger they had seen her up near Whitney, and that she had packed out a bunch of trash including someone's blue bag. The ranger chuckled and said "wow, I owe her big time for that...that was really nice of her to do that"

I hiked with Skinny D, Greg, B*rad, and Spoonman out of the meadow and up the trail. They stopped at Wallace creek to camp and I continued on.

I met this guy named Richard from Utah who had used my planner. We kept leapfrogging each other for the next several miles, either due to him stopping to rest or me stopping to take a photo.

Speaking of which, I found where one of my 96 photos was from and spent short of forever trying to figure out where it was taken from. Eventually I gave up and continued on thinking that it must have been farther up the trail. After about 15 minutes of walking I realized that must have been the spot. Frustrated, I dropped my pack and jogged back 1/2 mile to the rocky meadow. It wasn't super important to get a current photo, but it has sort of turned into a game/puzzle for me.

After studying the boulder patterns in the photo vs reality, I finally found the spot where I had taken the 1996 photos, the trees were much bigger and the bushes were different heights which made it hard to pick out similarities in the rocks.

Around nightfall I reached Tyndall Creek and made dinner. Since my bearcan won't lock I found a few boulders and stacked them on top of it.

Now it is bedtime under the stars.