Now there is some good common sense hunting advice. Take your kestrel, Chronograph, ballistics calculator, certainly a tripod and sandbags, and maybe a Sherpa to help you carry all your crap up the hill.
Practice with your rifle, if you plan to shoot farther than 400 yards practice from field positions, not a gosh darn bench, a lot more than you think necessary. Then invest in a rifle scope with a reticle that makes the drops easier to shoot with confidence. I like the Zeiss Z600 but you can pick from a bunch. Adjust your zero to hit at 200 when you arrive at altitude and give your mind a break from this ballistic monkey spanking.
Windage estimation at ranges over 500 yards make clean kills unlikely with any amount of mountain wind blowing. The altitude and barometric pressure wont matter inside 400 yards. Use a rangefinder with angle calculation to save another headache.
The most high tech dedicated elk hunter i know who has killed bulls over 700 yards with his fancy 30-378 and all the special long range gear missed 4 times cross canyon just over 400 because of the wind.
Spend your extra time running stairs or hiking hills instead of worrying about ballistics -the results will be noticeably better.
