Man that stings, 3 hours redoing a setup you already had dialed in is brutal. Fresno ground gets sneaky like that too, crust on top looks solid and then the pad just keeps going. Hope the rest of the job went smooth after you got it sorted.

The part about John Muir Trail hikers getting "locked into the Whitney exit" is the whole thing right there. Dale was pointing at something bigger than one permit, he was saying the finish line you picked shapes the whole trip. Whitney is a dead end, you climb it and then you turn around and walk back out, but going straight through to Happy Isles means the trail keeps moving and every day builds toward something. Once you stop treating one peak as the reason for the trip, the trip itself becomes the reason. That old guy probably watched a hundred hikers ruin their own hike by saving all their joy for the last day. Skipping the lottery did not just save you fifteen bucks, it saved you from finishing on a peak instead of finishing on a feeling.