The photos this year are all almost completely unedited. Or called SOC (straight out of camera). I have allot of wide angle shots because those are stitches. I try to teach as many people as I can how easy it is to stitch photos together to get the compositions you want. The rest of the editing has been simple exposure adjustments or unless I need to remove 50 hot pixels from a star trail photo. All I took for a lens this year was a fixed 35MM F1.4 so I could not zoom at all but it was no big deal.
Your right about how these long hikes come together. They start by being locations I have not been to or might want to see again and then begin getting a bit dictated based on resupply options which can be limiting. I used to have a rule to not do more than 10 days without resupply to keep the weight down but after last year doing up to 15 days over hard terrain I knew I could do more of that. I try to limit my trail miles to 10-15 miles a day and cross country to 5-7 miles a day. I have got allot better about planning properly so that it's not too far although I still make a few mistakes. Since I just enjoy being out in the Sierra I don't mind at all getting to camp early. Many times I have reached camp by lunch time. It helps that I do allot of reading out there so I am not laying around bored.
Length with gain and loss would be allot of work. In years past I kept track of those types of statistics. I used to run my GPS all day long to keep track of altitude gain and loss and have all the miles added up before I left but the last couple of years I stopped doing that because I don't really care anymore how many miles I am hiking total or how much gain or loss I have. I just figure I gain and lose about 200,000 feet in one of these hikes.
The total days and nights is easy and just depends on how you add it up. There are the total number of days between resupply but then there are more days like the ones I take for rest before heading out again.
I always carry exactly the amount of food I need. Such as if I do a 10 day section I wont need to pack breakfast for the day I leave, I shouldn't need a dinner for the day I come back if I can get food when I get out and depending on how long your last day is you may or may not need a lunch. So for 10 days it would be 9 dinners 9 breakfast and 9 or 10 lunches depending.
My sections were like this:
1: Eleanor to Eleanor (10 days)
2: Eleanor to Tuolumne (13 days)
3: Tuolumne to Reds Meadow (4 days)
4: Reds Meadow to VVR (6 days)
5: VVR to VVR (5 days)
6: VVR to VVR (4 days)
7: VVR to South Lake (16 days)
8: South Lake to South Lake (13 days)
9: South Lake to Cedar Grove (14 days)
10: Cedar Grove to Lodgepole (12 days)
11: Lodgepole to Lodgepole (13 days)
As for locations that were of interest on these section I would have to say:
1: Edith Lake, Horse Meadow, Buck Lakes
2: Benson Lake, the slide in slide canyon, Roosevelt Lake
3: 1000 Island Lake
4: The unique views that Red Slate & Red and White Mountains offer
5: Margaret Lake
6: None
7: Schoolmarm Lake up to Hockey Lakes,
8: Grouse Meadow, Lake 10,565, Dumbbell Lakes, Marion Lake
9: Bench Lake, Meadows between Arrow Peak and Bench Lake
10: Vidette Lakes, Kern Hot Spring, Redwood Meadow
11: Hamilton Lake, Lake 10,600 (Picket Guard Creek)
Those are some places that stand out as being something special to me. I hate that I put none in section 6 but that was the section I got flooded out in the middle of the night and bailed on everything else I had planned and nothing else on that section was beyond the typical amazing beauty seen in the Sierra.
