On May 28-29, 1983 Jim White and I set out on the Pat Keyes Trail. The trail is on Inyo National Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands. In 1994 the Inyo Mountains Wilderness was created and much of the trail is now in that Wilderness. See also my 1975 trip.
Jim had some work to do so we left around 8 or 9 a.m. and it was already getting warm as we headed up the trail. It's a steep trail and I wasn't in very good shape so we went slow. I had some extra water which I shared with Jim who had only one liter. As we got higher the breeze helped. Towards the end of the day I was running out of go power. We finally made it to the spring which was barely seeping. We made camp and enjoyed the pleasant evening.
The next morning after a slow start we decided to go back down instead of up - and go over to Onion Valley the next day and ski tour - the snow looked better than the heat where we were. It was fairly late in the morning before we started down so it was pretty hot by the time we reached the car. We enjoyed the ski touring next day.
