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Actually the Panamint range tops out at just over 11,000 feet, at Telescope Peak. One cloudless July day I was walking to its summit, wearing flip-flops, a t-shirt, and shorts, when a tiny fluff of a cloud suddenly appeared. An hour later I was hiking through driving snow in near-whiteout conditions. The weather there can be weird.

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The comment was about crossing the range, not climbing to the highest point. The Towne Pass West is closer to 5,000 feet elevation, not sure if this is the pass in question on State Route 190.

Maybe they were using earth measurements? 3500 metered is getting pretty close to 11000 imperial feet.

Yeah, might be. The use of the single-quote "3500'" is a pretty standard way of indicating feet, and I've never seen meters denoted that way. At the same time, I can easily imagine getting confused by the scale: there's a lot of ways in which the landscape there just doesn't look as big as it actually is, since a lot of the normal perception cues (humidity haze, trees, etc.) are missing.

Indeed a single quote is. But it 3500m being close to 11000ft feels very coincidental.

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