Matt Yaussi had warned me to get a permit the day before, otherwise I'd not get started until 10a since the Bishop permit office doesn't open until 8a. I didn't think it would take me nearly that long to get my act together, but was quite wrong. Part of the delay was that the drive took longer than I thought it would, but also because I was feeling a little altruistic as I drove into Independence. I stopped at the Subway shop to get lunch/dinner, noting a couple of backpackers thumbing south. I asked where they were headed. One was heading to Lone Pine for which I was not feeling that generous, but the other guy wanted to get back up to Onion Valley to continued his PCT southbound journey. It's quite a few extra miles to drive from the Foothill Rd junction up to Onion Valley, but I didn't mind and had a fine conversation with this young guy who was doing the Canada to Mexico trip in the opposite direction. He told of tough snow conditions up north in late June when he started and the need to blitz through the southern desert where water is becoming scarce. He was enjoying himself immensely, especially now that he'd reached the most scenic part of the route through the High Sierra. I still didn't feel like backpacking, but was glad others found it so rewarding.
And so it was just after 10a by the time I got to the
Shepherd Pass TH and was
ready to head out. A couple of young men had just returned from a backpacking
trip to Williamson and Tyndall and were eager to find themselves some
cheeseburgers. I felt like I was just beginning my sentence to three days hard
labor as these guys were being released from theirs. I was about 10min
up the trail when a voice came gasping behind me, one of the guys who had run up the
trail after me, commenting, "Damn, you're fast," while he stood there bent over,
breathing heavily to catch his breath. I pretty much knew why he was there, even
before he had said anything else. Their car wouldn't start and they needed a
jump. "Do you have jumper cables?" I asked. They did. To his credit the guy was
very apologetic and said he'd understand if I didn't want to come back to help
them. Given the effort he'd just put in, I could hardly refuse them. I dropped
my pack and hiked back down the trail with him. His friend had discovered a
dome light left on while he was chasing me down and after manuevering the van
into position the truck started right up. They were elated and I was back on
the trail once again.
The net result of all my delays was that I didn't 
start the climb out
of the 
Symmes Creek drainage until 11a. An hour and a half later I had
huffed my way to 
Symmes Saddle where I took my first short break with
a nice view of Williamson's NE Ridge to the south. The weather was starting to
warm, but it would never really get hot and for that I was immensely thankful.
I continued into the Shepherd Creek drainage, dropping the requisite 500ft
before the long, 
slow climb up through Mahogany Flat and
Anvil Camp. I stopped at the latter around 2:30p for
a lunch break where I ate half my Subway sandwich. From there I
continued up past 
Pothole Dome and 
Mt Keith, through the
morainal rock below the pass and finally the last steep climb up the
short switchbacks to 
Shepherd Pass just after 4p.
I set up camp at 
the large lake just SE of the pass in one of several
clearings
that backpackers have made over the years. There was no one else in sight. I
ate the other half of my sandwich for dinner, did some washing up and settled
into my sleeping bag by 5:30p. I was growing chilled now that I wasn't moving
and
the wind and cold were getting the best of me. A group of 4-5 climbers came by
shortly thereafter, wandering through camp on their way back from Williamson and
another peak, possibly Versteeg by their description. They were camped over the
crest on the north side a few hundred yards from the lake and drifted off that
way after our short conversation. It would be a long night, almost 13hrs in the
sack. It would do my body good in the way of rest and recuperation from the
day's long haul, but my mind would benefit little from the hours of wakefulness
lying there. Sigh.
I was up the next morning before 6:30a, in time to catch 
sunrise on
Mt. Keith
just over the pass as I was changing clothes and gathering my supplies for the
day. My breakfast consisted of a couple of PopTarts which I took
on the go, eating them as I plied 
the trail southwest of the
pass down 
Tyndall Creek. 
Kern Ridge was visible prominently
before me in the distance with its five 
main summits left to right:
Kern Point, Kern Ridge East, Kern Ridge West, Milestone
Mesa and Milestone Mtn. I was after the middle three of these, having done the
other two during my SPS quest years earlier. The first several hours of the
morning were spent on fairly easy terrain, crossing the Tyndall Creek drainage
and 
the broad plateau above and east of the Kern River. By 9a I had
dropped down to 
the trail junction at the Kern River, heading south
for only a few minutes before finding the unsigned but 
ducked junction
for the unmaintained Milestone Basin Trail. Time to start climbing, about
3,000ft over the next four miles.
I was feeling very tired as I made my way into Milestone Basin. I didn't recall
being this tired the other three times I had dayhiked into this basin, but I was
younger then and hadn't humped a backpack up to Shepherd Pass the day before. I
think I was smarter then as well. The route is fairly pleasant while
following the trail, but I eventually had to leave it to head left
towards Milestone. I passed by a couple of 
lovely lakes (shown as
marshes on the 7.5' topo) before heading up to the land of rock, sand, boulders
and more rock. I was aiming for 
the saddle between Milestone Mtn and
Milestone Mesa, though I knew from Secor
that it couldn't be approached directly. I climbed up towards the east shoulder
of Milestone Mtn before 
traversing left
to the saddle where the cliffs eased to
allow passage. It was 11:40a before I reached this pass between
Milestone Basin and 
Milestone Bowl to the south.
Centennial Peak, one of the last named summits
approved in the SEKI Wilderness, was named in honor of the NPS's 100th birthday.
Not having climbed it, I had always imagined that I might climb it in
conjunction with Milestone Mesa since the two are less than a mile apart.
Looking at the uninviting terrain across the Upper Milestone Bowl and the
vertical walls rising up to its summit, I realized just how unrealistic that
idea was. Perhaps another time.
I turned southeast to climb 
the ridgeline
to Milestone Mesa's summit, surprised
at how long it took considering it was only 1/3mi away. I had tried to stay on
the ridge itself thinking that was the most direct way, but because of
difficulties encountered there, it would probably have been easiest to skirt
right on the south side of the ridge. In any event, it was nearly 12:30a before
I finally reached 
the first summit, having taken almost 6hrs where I'd
been hoping for 4hrs - all these acres of rock just take a lot of time to get
across. The register was fairly recent, left 
in 2013 with two pages
to contain about eight entries. The 
most recent was only nine days
earlier and an impressive
one - Scott Barnes had taken over 11hrs to reach the summit starting from the
Shepherd Pass TH. He had already been to Milestone Mtn and would continue on
the ridge all the way to Kern Point and then back to the TH in something like
26hrs - holy crap, I wish I had his stamina. Scott seems to have taken the
dayhiking thing in a slightly different direction - he doesn't seem to care
about limiting the outing to 24hrs as I'd been doing all these years.
Removing that limitation could open the Sierra to a whole host of interesting
and mind-boggling outings. I wouldn't be surprised to see Scott move up to
30hr efforts and more over the next few years as he becomes more comfortable
with such outings. Amazing, really.
The "Mesa" in Milestone Mesa comes from the 5 acres+ of fairly
flat terrain around the summit. 
To the south, the ridgeline
drops 1,000ft over the course
of about 2/3mi to reach a deep saddle with Kern Ridge West. I had wondered
beforehand if I might be able to descend from this notch to the northeast for
my return. Now that I was 
staring down it,
it looked possible but difficult,
and without seeing the whole route could not tell if I might get cliffed out
below. It took an hour to go from 
Milestone Mesa
to Kern Ridge West, about
what I'd hoped, over rocky terrain neither tedious nor enjoyable. If there was
a register on this summit I didn't find it. Judging from the ones I found
later, Scott may have left a small one tucked in a plastic film cannister. What
I did find was a good view of Kern Ridge East 
to the southeast and more
options for a descent route. This gave me all the more incentive to tag the
last summit which amounted to a bonus peak. It wasn't a 13er like Milestone
Mesa or Kern Ridge West, but it was a 12er which seemed the next logical
step after knocking off the 13ers. So 
off I went.
I dropped another 900ft to the next saddle where I found 
a cairn
housing a register, which I knew about from my email exchanges with Scott. The
oldest scrap was 
from 1961, the 
others from the 1970s and 80s
before growing silent. Scott had left a cleaner 
piece of paper to
which I attached my name because, well, that's
what I do whenever I find a piece of paper in the Wilderness. Getting between
Kern Ridge West and East took an hour and a half, involving a traverse around
an intermediate Pt. 3,809m and some wayward rambling to climb the summit from
the south. The 
tiny register at the summit was left 
by Scott
and you'd think mine would make
the second entry, but it did not. Another fellow had been to the summit the
same day, during his own 16-day backpacking trip, and had evidently met Scott
either at the summit or on the way up.
Kern Point lay only about a mile further
to the southeast but I did not have the appetite to pad my stats further with
that one, so instead I went about finding my descent route. It looked from
Kern Ridge West that I could drop down the Northwest Slope of Kern Ridge East,
and now that I was 
looking down
at it, it didn't look too bad. 
The slope is
made up of rock and boulders, steep but decent footing. It took about half an
hour to descend the slope, after which I was treated to some
delightful hiking
down an unnamed hanging valley that drains down to the Kern River. At the
edge of the valley the drainage begins to 
drop steeply
through forested terrain.
This part was a bit dicey in that I had little idea if the slope would drop off
in cliffs before the river but I was happy to find otherwise. It was after 4:30p
by the time I 
reached the river,
finding the crossing a trivial matter this
time of year. At 9,200ft, this was the lowest point I would reach on the day.
The GPSr proved most helpful in directing me to the unsigned
junction with the Tyndall Creek Trail which I had been aiming for on my decent.
The junction is marked with rocks and branches and I was soon on the
unmaintained trail. Though no longer shown on park maps, it was in decent shape
and not hard to follow. 
The trail climbs steeply out of the
deep river canyon,
switchbacking occasionally as it climbs 1,300ft over the course of the first
mile. Afterwards, the trail continues ascending, but far more gradually. I
passed by an old 
sheepherders cabin back in the Tyndall Creek drainage,
reaching the unoccupied 
Ranger Station near 
a trail junction
at 6p. I moved out of the
forest and into the more open country in the upper part of the Tyndall drainage,
watching the sun set on 
Diamond Mesa,
Polychrome and Mt. Tyndall around 6:30p.
I had expected to be back in camp by this time and had left my headlamp in my
backpack. This was a small mistake since I still had an hour to go to reach
camp. I watched the last light playing off the 
trickling creek
as I stopped to
don my fleece and balaclava with the coming cold. twilight faded
over Kern Ridge around 7p and I stumbled 
back to camp
with minimal light after 7:30p. I
dug out my headlamp and turned it on to help me with some chores putting things
away and getting stuff ready for the next day. Not five minutes later the
light faded and then went completely dark, the batteries evidently on their
last leg. Not having checked these beforehand was a bigger mistake.
A little frustrated, I decided to change into my sleeping clothes and
get in the sack, forgoing dinner as less important at this point to staying
warm. I just managed to get the zippers all squared away with the bivy sack
and sleeping bag in the dark, then lay there for 30min shivering on and off
until my body finally warmed itself. It had been a long 13hr day and I expected
another fitful night's rest on uncomfortable ground.
I had hoped to rise at 3a and hike out to the TH by headlamp, allowing me to
breakfast in Lone Pine not long after sunrise. The dead batteries put that plan
to rest and I had to wait for 
sufficient light
before getting up the next
morning. Not surprisingly, the hike out was the easiest of the three days and
I found myself enjoying it more than I'd expected, even with the backpack. I
was four hours in getting 
from the pass to 
the TH, the only
folks I saw along the way were a large 
USFS packtrain
with a dozen stock animals and 4 handlers.
I suspect they were going up to clean out the Ranger Station, but I didn't
inquire during our brief chat while I sat to the side of the trail to let them
pass. Back by 10:45a, I was as happy at those two guys I'd run into at the TH
two days earlier. I still had a long drive back to San Jose, not arriving there
until after 6p. The trip had been successful, even if not all that enjoyable -
time to do some more car camping to shake this one off...