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Undoubtedly. Barb and I were mostly planted at one of the picnic tables by the store windows from 9 am till 9 pm that Saturday, while Brianne helped out Doug and Earlene in the store (for 12 straight hours during their busiest day of the season so far

Unbelievable! At ~3pm that Sat, I walked up to the store, filled my empty water bottles from the spigot outside the kitchen, waved "hi" to Doug, Sr., who was inside cooking, and took a gander at who was sitting around at the tables outside, all before my first stroll up and back to LPL. I'm pretty sure I may have walked into the store and probably saw Brianne working there, though I would not have known who she was. Amazing!

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We must have just missed each other that next Sunday morning, as we were there between 8:00 and 10:00 having breakfast with Laura, Chris, Richard, and Rick.

Even more unbelievable! I'm wracking my head trying to remember when I got up to the store on Sunday morning, but I'm pretty sure it was before 10:00 am, since I had breakfast on one of the outside picnic tables with the same 4 people you did! But I don't recall the time I arrived precisely. What an unfortunate miss!

I did Kearsarge Pass from the OV TH on Tue, 7/26. Awesome hike! Wonderful view at the pass! About 20 of us from a variety of smaller groups arrived at the pass during the same approx. one-hour period, and ended up talking, taking each others' pictures, etc. -- very fun!

As I understand how Laura's week went, you were very fortunate to have caught her that first day to go to Kearsarge Pass with her, since she caught some kind of cold about that time, and was sick pretty much the rest of that week, which aborted her planned BP trip for the same week (for which she had taken the week off of work, and ended up spending it sick). She recovered enough by Sat, 7/23 to do the Meysan Lake dayhike that day, and at the end of that dayhike was when I met up with her sitting on her TOF. Unfortunate for her (sick all week); good for you (got to hike with her). After talking with her for a while, her advice to me was along the lines of, "Get out of Lone Pine and don't be so fixated on Whitney". For at least a couple of days afterward, I took her advice, and was happy I did.

Glad I got to do some trailwalking also. Always an immense pleasure in those mountains, any time, any place.

CaT

If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracle of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.
- Lyndon Johnson, on signing the Wilderness Act into law (1964)