HINT for summing digits of a large power I recently started working through the Project Euler challenges, but I've got stuck on #16 (http://projecteuler.net/problem=16)

$2^{15} = 32768$ and the sum of its digits is $3 + 2 + 7 + 6 + 8 = 26$. What is the sum of the digits of the number $2^{1000}$?

(since I'm a big fan of generality, my interpretation is to find a solution to the sum of digits of $a^b$ in base $c$, and obviously I'm trying to solve it without resorting to "cheats" like arbitrary-precision numbers).
I guess this is simpler than I'm making it, but I've got no interest in being told the answer so I haven't been able to do a lot of internet searching (too many places just give these things away). So I'd appreciate a hint in the right direction.
I know that $2^{1000} = 2^{2*2*2*5*5*5} = (((((2^2)^2)^2)^5)^5)^5$, and that the repeated sum of digits of powers of 2 follows the pattern $2, 4, 8, 7, 5, 1$, and that the last digit can be determined by an efficient pow-mod algorithm (which I already have from an earlier challenge), but I haven't been able to get further than that… (and I'm not even sure that those are relevant).

Spoiler alert
It's not the most honorable solution, but in C# you can use the BigInteger class....
 var powerDigits = BigInteger.Pow(2, 1000).ToString();
 var sum = 0;
 for (var i = 0; i < powerDigits.Length; i++)
     sum += (int) Char.GetNumericValue(powerDigits[i]);
 Console.WriteLine(sum); //1366

