Going South and transmission problems

We made as special effort this morning to wake up early to watch sunrise over the High Sierra and saw this.

Sunrise over the High Sierra

Sunday, before the storm hit, we had attempted an ascent to the Patriarch grove of Bristlecones via Silver Canyon.  about 30% of the way up in 4WD (6500 ft elevation) the transmission temperature light came on in Mr. Toad, our jeep.  What?  Never been on before and last year we drove up there via the long route.  Hmm.  Better err on the conservative side as that is not a place to get stuck if you can avoid it.  So down the hill we go.  Sigh.  We have annually visited the Bristlecones for many years so were bummed.

Forward to Monday where we found a local, highly recommended auto shop who took a look and thought perhaps we had too much debris and dust in the radiator cooling area so we had him flush it out.  Should be fine, right?  Since it had stormed the previous night, we decided to drive west up into AspenDell and Lake Sabrina, and North Lake (yesterdays post).  No problems but we only used 4WD on a short steep snowy part into North Lake. 

Forward to today with beautiful sunny weather, we thought we would try to at least drive up far enough to catch a glimpse of the bighorn sheep in canyon before heading south.  

We did get further up when light came on again.  ???  Back down the hill and found the only transmission shop in town who put the computer on it and came up with a wierd error.  He wanted to flush out hte fluid and change the filter, etc.  I called out mechanic John at Volz brothers back in Nevada City who advised we take it to a Jeep dealer for check up and avoid high altitude steep gravel roads.  Ok.  So no Bristlecones this year.  We have one on our dashboard from last year so that will just have make do.

Me at Bristlecones in 2010.  Fatso huh?  hehe

So now we are heading south to Lone Pine area and Tuttle Creek campground to dump waste and find a place to hangout for a few days which has internet and cell service.  We are liking the low price of BLM (free) so will poke around to see what  we can find.