Hoan’s extended family came up to the Tahoe house for 4th of July weekend and Darlene and I were able to join them. Six adults and six kids at the house! Over the course of four days, we caught the fireworks at Donner Lake, checked out the nearby North Tahoe Regional Park, hiked up to the vista point on the Tahoe Rim Trail above the house (and Brockway Summit) for a sunset view, kayaked from Homewood to Sugar Point State Park (and back), hiked from Donner Summit through the old train tunnels and hung out a bit at Kings Beach. Hoan, Samantha, Justine and Phong also gave one of the Tahoe Treetop Adventure Parks a try. (One of them is just a mile or so from the house.)
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I haven’t been skiing at Mammoth since the early nineties, after college, but it’s where I learned to ski in high school from nearby Bishop. And I had forgotten what a great big and diverse ski mountain it is – though I’m sure I also wasn’t skiing as much of any mountain’s terrain back then either. Anyway, driving to Mammoth from Santa Cruz/San Jose in the winter isn’t very convenient (given all the Sierra passes are closed) and you have to essentially drive by many other great ski resorts to do it. However, with an extended stay at our new place in Tahoe last week, it was easy to hop down to Mammoth for a couple of days (just a three hour drive) and make use of our Mountain Collective passes.
We got some nice, typical spring skiing conditions: overnight frozen snow, following the sun as the slopes softened up from east to west to north. Plus Mammoth is so high (peaking at 11,000 ft), it was easy to avoid any sticky slush that would develop lower down.
I had promised Darlene a substitute backpacking trip when we found out she would no longer be able to go on our upcoming backpacking trip in Washington state. We were able to take four days over the Labor Day weekend and I picked out a promising area that I hadn’t been to north of Lake Thomas A. Edison that would give Darlene another taste of the High Sierra.
We took off Saturday afternoon amid some unusual high temps as well as heavy smoke that had blown down from numerous wildfires in Oregon and Northern California. It was a five and a half hour drive to get to the trailhead, including an interesting drive over a very rough, one lane road from Huntington Lake that goes over Kaiser Pass at 9184 feet. We found a spot to camp along the road near the High Sierra Ranger Station on Saturday night and to wait to get a wilderness pass in the morning.
A meadow along Silver Pass Creek
We had our pick of numerous trailheads near Lake Edison but settled on doing a loop up and over part of the Silver Divide by following the John Muir Trail / Pacific Crest Trail over Silver Pass and then returning via Goodale Pass. (View map.) The smoke from the distant fires was still pretty heavy and worrisome on Sunday morning but we managed to just barely catch the backpacker’s ferry boat across Lake Edison and that cut out four miles of hiking our way around the reservoir to get started. From the ferry landing (7643 ft), it’s about nine miles to the top of Silver Pass (10,900 ft).
Our room with a view over Chief Lake at 10,400 ft.
There’s lots of small, alpine lakes scattered along the divide and we found a lovely spot to spend two nights overlooking Chief Lake just below Silver Pass at about 10,400 ft. Thankfully the smoke wasn’t too bad at altitude and it mostly cleared out overnight with the winds and occasional brief showers. Not much to see in the way of stars though with a very bright full moon on display.
Sunset skies over the distant Minarets to the north
In the morning, we were treated to views of the distant Minarets (part of the Ritter Range) up near Mammoth. There were a good deal of mosquitos in the morning and evening but not as much as I had feared given our really wet winter this year. The weather alternated between periods of sunshine and heavy clouds with brief sprinkling while we ventured up a nearby ridge on the Silver Divide to get some more stupendous views of our surroundings.
Enjoying the panorama perched on a ridge above Silver Pass
Monday night was tough to sleep through as we had hours of heavy gusting winds but eventually it quieted down. Our return journey on Tuesday was about 12 miles over Goodale Pass (10,997 ft) down to the Vermillion Resort on Lake Edison. However, it was clear my boots were not going to make it – the soles were completely disintegrating. They’re probably also why I lost my footing and ended up crashing into a creek when I attempted to push off one rock to leap to another. I ended up using my shoelaces to tie the soles to the bottom of my shoes and keep them from coming completely separated before reaching the end of the trail. I might need some new boots now though.
As part of our road trip up through the Owens Valley in mid-May in the Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle, we spent a few days in the Bishop area. I showed Darlene around Bishop (where I went to high school), we drove out to Mill Pond and up to Lake Sabrina and then ended up camping out for two nights in the Buttermilk area after going for a hike. We also visited the Laws Railroad Museum and had a nice afternoon down at a warm spring along the Owens River.
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After showing Darlene around Bishop (where my brother and I went to high school), I took her out to see the Laws Railroad Museum. In some ways, it’s much the same as I remember from riding out with Glenn on our bikes for a day long adventure but it’s also much improved and expanded. It’s now even more of a great place to visit while touring the Owens Valley and the Eastern Sierra.
Darlene and I spent several hours at the Manzanar National Historic Site on our visit to the Owens Valley in the Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle in mid-May. I went to high school in Bishop in the 80’s, so I’ve certainly seen Manzanar before, but it’s quite different since I last visited. They’ve converted what had become a county storage shed but was originally an auditorium in the internment camp into a very impressive and engaging interpretive center. You can now see some of the belongings and artifacts of the people who were forcibly relocated there during World War II as well as hear recordings of their stories and enter restored versions of some of the camp buildings. It’s an incredibly well done exhibit and all the more relevant today with all of the new fear mongering going on. It’s definitely worth half a day or more to visit.
Darlene and I headed over to the Eastern Sierra for a few days last week to catch the fall colors of the aspen climbing the mountain valleys. We came over Sonora Pass, visited Bodie and camped the first night near Lundy Lake, hit Mammoth Lakes and then camped below Rock Creek Lake before finally having to make our way back via Tioga Pass and through Yosemite.
Seems like we might have been about a week early to catch the peak but it also seemed that a lot of the aspen were really dry and drying out quickly after turning yellow (skipping over orange and red), presumably due to the extended drought.
Bodie was a thriving gold and silver mining boomtown in the late 1800’s, home to many thousands (and many dozens of saloons) before falling into decline in the 1900’s. It was eventually completely abandoned in the 1950’s and became a state historic park in 1962. Many buildings remain standing and still contain the furniture, appliances, equipment, stores and even personal items left behind.
I’ve visited Bodie a number of times before, including in the winter, but this time was with Darlene on our way over to see the fall colors in the Eastern Sierra. My first visit was with my family back in 1979 so I managed to dig up and scan in a few old photos of me and my brother Glenn from 35 years ago.
