Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve - Escape from L.A.

Mono Lake is among the oldest lakes in North America, and it anchors the western end of the Great Basin with Great Salt Lake on the eastern end.  The Great Basin has no outlet to the ocean, so water is lost only through evaporation.  The salts left behind create a salty and alkaline environment that supports a surprising amount of life.  Between 4 trillion and 12 trillion brine shrimp populate Mono Lake, along with the alkali fly which begins its life underwater, and is also found in abundance during warmer months.  Thanks to the prodigious number of shrimp and flies, Mono Lake provides a nesting ground for over 2 million migratory birds each year!

Thankfully, one man, David Gaines, realized how special this place was in 1978.  At the time, the Vampire that is Los Angeles had sucked over half of the water out of Mono Lake by diverting the creeks that flow into it with callous disregard for the destruction of the environment.  David Gaines realized that L.A. had sucked the life and every drop of water out of Owens Lake, and that Mono would be next.  His activism, with the support of many others, and ultimately the action of the California court system, saved the lake.  By 1982, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had sucked more than half of the water out of Mono Lake.  In human terms, they lowered the lake level by 45 feet, taking it from 4.3 million acre-feet of water to only 2.1 million acre-feet.  Thanks to David Gaines, LADWP now only receives 25% of the water that should flow into Mono Lake, and guidelines are in place to prevent the lake from being drawn down to levels that would risk killing all life.  As the lake level dropped, the salinity doubled, putting the brine shrimp and alkali fly populations at risk.  No shrimp, no flies - no birds.  Fortunately, the Mono Lake Committee had the foresight to negotiate a deal whereby LADWP received funding to build a waste water reclamation facility, so now L.A. residents can drink their own excrement instead of the clean water of the High Sierra.

On a beautiful winter day with none of the wind that has been whipping across northern California, the Tufa rising out of Mono Lake create an otherworldly spectacle.

Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve provides a number of trails to access the lake, and an unimproved boat ramp.  Only a few days ago, another threat to Mono Lake, California's inability to control its public debt, was deflected.  This park was slated for closure, but funding has been found in the form of parking fees for the park. 

The Tufa shown in these photos are the equivalent of fossilized springs.  As fresh water rises up through fault lines and enters the hypersaline water of Mono Lake, the interaction of calcium-rich fresh water and carbonates in the salt water forms these calcium carbonate towers.  As the water levels were drawn down, the tufa towers were exposed.  Check out the moon keyholed in a tufa tower below!

Thanks again to the incredible loss of water in Mono Lake, the loop trail at South Tufa takes you through immense gardens of tufa now exposed on dry land.

The unique and interesting tidbits about Mono Lake just keep coming!  Did you know that NASA found the first organism ever that is able to replace some of its phosphorus with arsenic in order to sustain its growth when starved of phosphorus?  This discovery is still being debated.  As well, Storm Thorgerson's fantastic photo The Diver was taken here for the album Wish You Were Here.  It shows a man diving into Mono Lake without creating a ripple, with the Tufa Towers in the background.  It was created by having the diver do a handstand until all of the ripples had faded away.

This is Life

Sorry we haven't been posting much during November, this is what we've been up to:

Other than two days over the Thanksgiving holiday, we haven't seen a lift line!

Yosemite National Park - Amazing Sights, but it's the Disneyland of National Parks!

Yosemite National Park has amazing scenery.  Incredible, giant rocks surround a lush, green valley filled with not only pine, but also sugar maple and oak.  Much of the park is at lower altitudes, making it incredibly lush compared to the High Sierra that we have been hiking around Mammoth Lakes.

The fall colors were just starting, but I imagine that Yosemite will be spectacular in a week or two.  Look at that maple in the bottom right of the picture below.

We were amazed that the waterfalls were still flowing this late in the year, even if at a fraction of their spring volume, so we got lucky there.  Maybe in the spring, Yosemite will make a better impression when the water is flowing full bore.

Unfortunately, you can't escape the fact that Yosemite also features 4 million visitors a year, and it seems like all 4 million try to crowd into the Valley.  It also seems to be staffed by volunteers, and most people in uniforms that we encountered had only superficial knowledge of the area.  It was quite a change from Glacier, Yellowstone, and the Tetons, where every person in a uniform that we spoke to seemed to have a geology degree.  The ranger-led presentation we attended at the Lodge on the geology of Yosemite was great, and the presenter obviously knew her stuff, but she was the exception rather than the rule.  We have obviously been spoiled by the high caliber of the staff in the aforementioned Parks, so Yosemite's volunteer staff were a bit of a let down. 

When we first arrived in the Yosemite Valley, we went straight to the campground reservations booth to check out the waiting list for a campsite on a Tuesday morning in the "off season".  Unfortunately, the off-season doesn't really seem to exist here at the moment, and the list was about thirty names long before noon.  Next, we checked out Camp 4, which showed as "open", but when we got there, it looked more like a gathering of the Rainbow People than a campground (and to be clear, I'm not saying that it is a gathering of Rainbow People, just that it looks a lot like what I encountered at "the Slab" in Ocala one March when I stumbled onto a gathering of Rainbow People).  We bailed quickly on the Valley, and headed south to Wawona.  This turned out to be the right move.  The Wawona Campground was open, and clean, with plenty of sites available in the early afternoon.  It was entertaining to get back from a day of hiking, and sit in our campsite enjoying a freshly cooked hot meal of white chili or black beans and rice, and watch a few dozen cars and RVs who hadn't hit the campsite lottery in the Valley race around the Wawona campground trying to find an empty spot.  We ended up sharing our sight with fellow tent campers every night - once with a nice young couple from Israel, once with some hard drinking Dutch, and once with a couple from California.

Despite this evening rush, Wawona was a good spot to pitch the tent for the week.  There was a Pioneer History Center less than a mile down the road.  The Wawona Hotel next door had wireless access, and a restaurant if I needed a night off from cooking.  There is also the Tenaya Lodge just outside the park, where we enjoyed a hot meal and a fizzy soda one night when our son was feeling a bit green around the gills due to the time spent driving back and forth on the winding roads of the Park.  Glacier Point was about an hour away, as was Yosemite Valley, so most days began and ended with the same drive, and three days of this and a recharged Nintendo DSi gave him a brush with car sickness that was miraculously fixed with an orange soda and a cheeseburger.  Finally, there were good hikes and the Mariposa Grove seven miles down the road from Wawona, which, while crowded, were nothing like the trails in the Yosemite Valley.

We had previously been through the Muir Woods north of San Francisco and seen the coastal redwoods, but the four-mile hike through the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias was stunning.  The parking lot and the lower trail is crowded, but few people actually hike up the path to Upper Grove at the top of the trail.  There is a tram that runs up and down a paved road, but it runs infrequently enough that we hiked in almost complete peace and privacy to the top.

When you reach the top, near the "museum", the giant trees scattered about with bright green spaces between presents a scene that tops anything we saw in Muir Woods.

If you look carefully, you can see my wife at the bottom left of the picture above, and of course, the "museum" is in the center background.  This is truly one of those "places of power", where you stop and stand in awe of what surrounds you.

Angels BBQ, Mammoth Lakes - So Much More than BBQ!

We hadn't tried Angels BBQ until recently, and what a mistake.  It isn't the BBQ that we were missing out on, however.  It wasn't bad, and it wasn't great...and unfortunately, Angels BBQ has to share this blog with Wilson's BBQ, which is a tough act to follow.  Thankfully, we asked our server for a few recommendations, and she pointed us to the Fish Tacos and the Chicken Tostada salad.  Both were fantastic!  The Fish Tacos were so good that my son almost bit the end of my finger off as I shared one with him.  No lie.  My fingernail is black!

Another plus for Angels BBQ is the Hop Ottin' IPA, which accompanies the fish tacos nicely.  My wife gave the thumbs-up to the Chicken Tostada salad below.

Our son went with the pulled pork sandwich, which scored a solid average on the BBQ scale.  If you're craving BBQ, it will satisfy your need; but you can get a sandwich that tastes like the one below at just about any BBQ shack on the side of the road from Florida to North Carolina or Texas to Tennessee.  Next time, maybe he'll order something a bit higher up on the BBQ difficulty scale, and we can re-rate Angels BBQ.

Finally, the Boysenberry Pie at Angels BBQ is fantastic, even though you may want an extra scoop of ice cream to top it, so save some room.  The Deep Dish Apple Pie could use a lot more brown sugar and cinnamon, but we're big fans of Apple Crisp rather than Pie, so we could be biased.

Convict Lake Camping - Fall Colors near Mammoth Lakes, CA

Wow, what a wonderful weekend to be camping at Convict Lake!

Yes, that is our son playing a massively multi-player online game...but he did walk 5 miles earlier in the day, so it is computer time earned.

A stream full of trout, golden aspen, blue skies, temperatures in the 70s...it just doesn't get any better than this!

This is our campsite with the morning sun rising in the east, lighting up the face of the mountain opposite.  You should have seen this same scene at moonrise last night.  The granite rock face caught the moonlight like a silver veil, with the crevices as black as the dark side of the moon.

Our second hike around Convict Lake started by crossing the bridge between the campsite and the resort.

We found this hornet's nest on the trail near one campsite.  Our son joked about chucking his walking stick through it...six hours later, he was stung by a bee on the trail around the lake.

Pictures just don't do this place justice....

Coming from the deciduous forests of the Appalachians, I'm used to the entire mountain turning colors.  Here in the Eastern Sierra, it's more like amazingly bright yellow, red, and gold paint has been poured wherever there is water runoff.

The views around the lake are spectacular at this time of year, with the color on the leaves, the color of the water, and the color of the mountains.

Best of all, after the hike, we get to hang out in the bar at the Restaurant at Convict Lake, watch some football, and have their indescribably delicious Chocolate Ganache dessert!

Snow in Mammoth Lakes, CA - Oct 5, 2011

We had about a half-dozen inches in town, and Mammoth Mountain is reporting 15 inches!  Another couple inches expected tonight as well, before fall returns by week's end!

The Season is Changing

When we lived in Conway, near Orlando International Airport, the noise of the jets landing and taking off was ever present except on the week of 9/11/2001.  Within a few weeks of buying our house, we replaced the old "contractor-grade" windows with double-paned sliders and regained peace and quiet.

Here in Mammoth Lakes, the change of seasons sounds like a dozen jets landing at OIA.  In our sheltered hollow on the leeward side of the mountain, the pine trees don't move, but you can hear the wind screaming down the valley below where the Eagle Lodge sits at the end of Meridian Road.

I believe that I'll have pictures of the first snow of the year to post tomorrow!  I just watched the first cloud of snow flurries dumping past the window...cast off from the wind whipping down the valley below. 

Time to wax the skis and snowboard, and make some hot chocolate!

Sherwin Lakes Trail followed by happy hour at John's Pizza Works, Mammoth Lakes, CA

The Sherwin Lakes trail head is convenient from Mammoth Lakes, CA and is easily found by taking Old Mammoth Road to Sherwin Creek Road.  On Sherwin Creek Road, you'll see the sign directing you to turn to the Sherwin Lakes Trail head pictured below.

Turn up the dirt road, and continue until you see the sign below directing you left to the trail head parking lot.

The trail head is clearly signposted.

The parking lot offered plenty of room, but we are in a quiet week for the area - the mountain bikers and fishermen are gone, and the snow has not arrived yet.

The trail is the usual extremely well-maintained High Sierra path.  It meanders slowly up through the woods, crossing Sherwin Creek on a small bridge.  It appears that horses use a small path a few feet upstream of the bridge to cross.

After a short walk through the woods, the trail begins a series of switchbacks that rapidly cover the main part of the ascent on this walk.



After negotiating most of the switchbacks, you're rewarded with spectacular views of the town of Mammoth Lakes and Highway 395.



After a short, more or less level walk through a recently burnt section of forest, the largest of the Sherwin Lakes reels you in.  In the distance across the lake, you can see a mountain stream splashing down the rocks.



This path to the right is inevitably where you will go on your first visit here...the views of the lake are too tantalizing to resist.



However, if you backtrack a short distance and take this left fork up the hill through the burnt trees, you come to a path that follows the lake shore and passes through three beautiful campsites.

The nearest site is a short walk from the fork in the trail mentioned above.

The next is on the far side of the lake and sits on a bluff offering beautiful views.

The third campsite sits just above the splashing creek, and offers plenty of room and well-spaced trees if you're sleeping in a hammock.



We saw fish jumping everywhere in Sherwin Lake.  During a picnic by the falls where the creek tumbled into the lake, we watched dozens of trout leaping in the rapids for fun or food.  We will definitely be returning to camp here in the future!  The round trip is about 4 1/2 miles, and we passed a number of people walking their dogs (all wet from a dip in the lake) both coming and going.

Of course, with the usual morning exercise and this hike, we felt a happy hour would be appropriate, so we stopped in at John's Pizza Works and Outlaw Saloon for the first time.  I enjoyed the Mammoth Brewery ale on tap, my wife liked the double gin and tonic, and our son was all over the pizza, wings, and the Taco Wedgie!

What's a Taco Wedgie, you ask?  Descibed as "taco meets calzone", it sounded like a gut-busting, doughy carb-fest.  We were amazed when it arrived with an incredibly crisp thin crust wrapped around a nice taco filling.  It turned out to be the hit of the happy hour!  If it had been served with a nice, fresh salsa instead of the taco sauce, I would have had to order two!  I can imagine one of these stuffed with any number of ethnic dishes - Chicken Curry Wedgie, Fajita Wedgie, Chili Wedgie, the list is endless!

The happy hour menu at John's Pizza Works offers great value, but the food is good enough that you'll still spend more than you think as you work your way through multiple rounds of pub grub and big ales!  I'm sure that makes John, and me, happy!

Saddlebag Lake Resort - Lundy Pass - Lake Helen - Cascade Lake - whoa, I'm lost!

I'm two-for-two.  Two hikes, and I've lost the trail twice!  This time, I even saw the sign pointing to the right trail, but it couldn't possibly have been right, so I went the other way.  It's all part of the character-building for our son.  If he can see his parents walking in circles, but still persevere in finding the right trail and finishing the hike...and more importantly, doing it fast enough to make the last boat out of the wilderness...then there must be a lesson there somewhere.  Maybe something like "their generation is just nuts", or hopefully something more positive, but time will tell.

Saddlebag Lake is a resort that really seems to be genuine and family-owned.  I really have no idea about the ownership, but the overall feel is one of a family operation where the dad or uncle works the bar-be-que churning out delicious tri-tip steak sandwiches, hamburgers, and hot dogs for the guests, a daughter/cousin/neice/family friend works the register ringing up ferry fares and lunch, and a team of sons/nephews/friends runs the pontoon boat that takes hikers and backpackers across the lake to enjoy the beautiful Twenty Lakes Basin a couple hours sooner than without the ferry.  It's probably all part of the fantasy I've built in my mind around the delicious Apple Crumble Pie we had after today's hike, but you never know!

Things started out great.  We headed up US-395 towards Yosemite for the first time.  We wanted to see if it was as "crazy-busy" as we had heard for the Labor Day Holiday weekend.  We were not disappointed.  There were cars going in circles, lines at the bathrooms in gas stations, and the parking lots at Saddlebag Lake were full.  We slipped into a parallel space between two pine trees, and sauntered down to the lake secure in the knowledge that no matter how crowded it was, we could come back next week and the parking lot would be empty.

Our luck continued, as we walked up to the Saddlebag Lake Resort to find the smell of bar-be-que and a ticket for the ferry available with only a half-hour wait - just time enough to gobble up a tri-tip steak sandwich and a couple slices of watermelon!

No sooner had we topped up the tank, then our boat was ready and I was like Leonardo DiCaprio, King of the World on a sinking ship!

The Twenty Lakes Basin trail is a 5 mile loop that seems to always be weaving around a lake or creek.  It is a rocky trail, and with the enormous snows this winter, even in early September, snow is still a factor!  The walk began harmlessly enough.  Look at the levels of the lakes in the picture below.  The little, unnamed lake sits a story or so above Greenstone Lake, which sits quite a number of feet above Saddlebag Lake.  The trail is full of these types of stepping-stone vistas with little waterfalls and steep creeks linking lake after lake.

If we had checked the map at this point, we would have realized that we were taking the trail clockwise.  Unfortunately, we thought we were taking the trail counter-clockwise.  We were having a great time, the hike was fantastic, and ignorance is bliss!

About a mile or two into the trail, we see a sign that says "Lake Helen", with an arrow pointing the opposite direction than we would have expected.  In a moment of hubris, we munch our beef jerky and decide the sign must be wrong, since it would mean that we have to climb up a steep, rocky hillside.  We jump the creek and take the soft, wildflower-lined trail that is not so steep.  We are rewarded with spectacular lake views.

Unfortunately, we have taken an off-shot of the main trail that leads to the old Tungsten Mine (which we didn't see), and end up circumnavigating Cascade Lake before rejoining the main trail - about 1.5 miles and an hour later.  All of the sudden, the four hours we had allowed for this nice loop hike and return on the 5:45pm ferry had turned from a lazy day into a race against time.  Our son began lecturing us on the various facts he had picked up from watching a couple seasons of Survivorman, Dual Survival, Man vs Wild, and Man, Woman, Wild.  In no time, he had convinced us we would be spending the night on a rocky slope in a snow cave, trying to beat fire out of rocks and wet twigs, and eating raw lake trout while fighting off bears.

Fortunately, we found the main trail and the sign we had ignored earlier, and this time, we followed the arrow and scrambled up the hill double-time to make sure we didn't miss our ferry out of the basin.

The key word in all of this is "basin".  Even I can't get lost when you drop me in a bowl surrounded by 12,000 foot peaks.  Eventually, you must walk in a circle, or climb a really steep hill.  As long as you refuse to climb the hill, you will come back to where you started!

We jumped the creek between Excelsior Lake and Shamrock Lake, and started on the part of the map designated as the "small trail" (versus the "main trail").

The trail got steep and rocky, and we were, of course, in a hurry due to the time lost wandering around Cascade Lake, thinking we needed to waste time or we'd be way too early for the ferry.

We made up the lost time, and then slowed down a bit to appreciate the incredible trail and view.  Rocks, lakes, and wildflowers everywhere!

With about half of the hike traversed, and about an 1 1/2 hours left before our scheduled departure, we're doing OK but don't have a lot of margin for delay as we're traveling at the speed of a 9 year old boy - sometimes very fast, sometimes very slow.  We then hit the "snow trail".  There was so much snow this year that snow drifts are everywhere.  When the staff of Saddlebag Lake arrived in early July to open the resort, they found three feet of snow and ice still covering the lake!  The lifts at Mammoth Mountain ran until July 4th.  It was a truly prodigious winter!  We hit this section of trail feeling a bit behind schedule.

Look at the path above.  It was a wild slide down the side of a snow drift!  In more than a few places, the trail was completely lost, and we were left guessing which rock slide we should scramble down in order to rejoin the "small trail" as it emerged from under the next snow drift.

Soon enough, we had left the tricky bits of the trail behind, and were left scrambling across rocky scree around Lake Helen. 

Fortunately, we'd made up lost ground thanks to the yeoman's effort on the part of our son to stretch his stride.  It was time for a break on a sun-warmed rock.

The wife/mother is by this time so sick of hearing how fun it would be to survive the night in the wilderness and all of the gory details of shelter-building and fire-starting and hillbilly hand-fishing that she is beginning to fade from view.  Unfortunately, she has no hope of escape as the trail once more becomes steep and hard to pick out.

With a last effort that would make any Scout leader proud, they push through the final stretch of trail past Odell Lake, and it's smooth sailing down the hill to the boat dock and ferry pick-up with almost 45 minutes to spare and 6+ miles (including the detour around Cascade Lake) under our belts.

We make a fast exit through the Tioga Pass and back to peaceful Mammoth Lakes, relatively crowd-free after the bustle of Yosemite!