So here we were, at the South Fork Trailhead, just three days before we would leave for the High Sierra Trail, doing a shakedown hike. We were starting late, and that was my fault. But I wanted to go ahead with the shakedown hike anyway, since we were running out of days to do this, before the Sierras. I wanted to have one day to recover before we headed up there. We arrived just after 4pm, and had just a few hours of sunlight left. The parking lot was completely empty of cars, which was not what I was expecting.



