At the end of November, my son, Mike, along with my wife and I did a loop car trip over about a week’s time from Orange County, to San Luis Obispo, then in and through Yosemite, over the Tioga Pass and down the 395 to Lone Pine. We checked out the Whitney Portal Hostel, which Doug Sr. was still working on, preparing for the grand opening this month.
While in Lone Pine, we stayed at the Best Western Motel. Next to the motel is a vacant lot, and I took out my compass to identify the peaks above Lone Pine, which is a fun hobby of mine (at least fun for me!). Since I’ve come to the realization it is virtually impossible for me to climb all of them, I can at least see them and know what I am looking at with my compass. (I have a PDA program that tells where all the mountains are from any location.) During my early morning compass venture, in freezing temperatures, I took a bunch of photos with my Canon PowerShot SD500. After getting back home, I uploaded them to my computer, but managed to get distracted by all my other trip photos and forgot about them. Well, this week I rediscovered the photos and stitched them together to get a 30-mile panorama above Lone Pine, stretching from Timosea Peak in the south past Mount Keith in the north.
A full version can be clicked on
HERE.
I also created a labeled version, so you can see all of the visible peaks, plus even the hills among the Alabama Hills, which are designated in meters on my topo map.
The photo was taken at an elevation of 3,710 feet above sea level. This means at this relatively low elevation some of our more familiar peaks are not visible in the pano, including Mt. McAdie, Mt. Marsh, Mt. Muir, Wotans Throne, Mt. Irvine and Candlelight Peak. They are basically blocked by the imposing, massive ramparts of Lone Pine Peak. However, barely peaking over the top ridge of Lone Pine Peak is Mount Mallory,
You can view the labeled version of the panorama by clicking
HERESince Crooks (Day) Needle and Keeler Needle are so familiar, I did not label them.
If any one would like a peak list for a specific Lone Pine location, which would show all the peaks with compass directions, distances and apparent elevations in degrees above eye level, PM me and let me know.
One other note. I noticed an interesting feature in the Alabama Hills. On the hill I labeled as Benchmark 1366, there appears to be a structure under the “a” in “Benchmark.” My topo has the designation “South Alabama Hills” at this point. I wonder if the structure (concrete structure?) is a monument of some sort?
