SUPER HIGHS AND LOWS AROUND LONE PINE

Carol writes: 

MT. WHITNEY

At 14,505 feet of elevation, Mt. Whitney is the tallest mountain in the “Lower 48.”

Nestled two miles in elevation below the summit on the eastern side of Mt. Whitney is the tiny town of Lone Pine.  We settled in for the next week in a shipshape RV spot just outside Lone Pine, 

our stopover for a week as we headed south on 395 down the eastern side of the Sierras.  Al recalled many fond memories of hiking in this part of the Sierras during his bachelor days when he summited Mt. Whitney 3 times!  I have often wondered what that experience was like as he told interesting stories about climbing Mt. Whitney.

Taking advantage of autumn’s clear cloudless skies, I was keen to head up to the Mt. Whitney trailhead to hike a short section of that famous trek to the roof of the Sierras.

Memories of previous ascents refreshed Al’s  memory cells as we headed up Whitney Portal Road.

The closer we got to Mt. Whitney, the more she revealed her spectacular self.

The trail to the summit started out in cool shade, 

but very quickly gained altitude to a marvelous sunny view looking down onto the Alabama Hills in Owens Valley far below.

Unlike when Al climbed Mt. Whitney in the 1970s, today any climber who wants to summit Mt. Whitney must have a permit awarded by lottery.  However, casual day hikers can go as far as 2.7 miles on the trail without a permit, so we hiked up about 700 feet in elevation for lunch before turning around.

I was so glad we did that…  It was exhiliarating for me to get a feel for Al’s previous treasured experiences in John Muir’s beloved wilderness below the pinnacle of the Sierra Nevadas.

ALABAMA HILLS

What’s with the name “Alabama Hills” in Lone Pine, California?  Prospectors sympathetic to the Confederate cause named the Alabama Hills after the Confederate warship C.S.S. Alabama. 

This immensely photographic geologic wonder began to attract Hollywood filmmakers nearly 100 years ago.  What first caught my sentimental eye was Lone Ranger Canyon, where the Lone Ranger and Tonto shot it out with many an outlaw.

Classics like Gunga Din and How the West Was Won were filmed on Movie Flat Road.

More modern movies like Django Unchained and Iron Man were also shot in the Alabama Hills.

When a fellow hiker asked us movie fans if we wanted a pic, we jumped at the chance to have our personal Alabama Hills glamour shot posed within an arch that perfectly framed Mt. Whitney in the background.

OWENS LAKE

In my previous blog, I touched on how the Save-Mono-Lake campaign reversed water withdraws from tributaries flowing into Mono Lake and thus  saved the lake from becoming a parched lakebed.  Sadly, that wasn’t the case on the outskirts of Lone Pine at Owens Lake, which was once a 200-square-mile lake that had previously held water continuously for over 800,000 years. 

Starting in 1913, within 7 years Owens Lake had been drained dry due to diversion of water out of the Owens River into the aqueduct for the city of Los Angeles.  For many decades after that, terrible dust storms and harmful air pollution ravaged the land, making Owens Lake the largest single source of dust pollution in the United States.

Twenty years ago, after years of legal fights, the City of Los Angeles began serious dust mitigation measures to alleviate the toxic dust storms that blew off the barren lake. 

Throughout numerous phases, a variety of methods have been utilized to mitigate the dust from Owens Lake, such as:

using locally mined quartz gravel as a waterless mitigation method over massive expanses…

restoring native alkalai meadows…

and shallow flooding, 

which has created a vibrant habitat for birds and wildlife.

DEATH VALLEY

Lone Pine has the distinction of being located between massive extremes of geography—at the base of the highest peak in the “Lower 48,” in addition to being only 85 miles from the lowest spot in the nation at Death Valley.  

Death Valley National Park covers such an enormous expanse that we weren’t able to see every area of the park when we camped there for a couple of weeks in December 2015.  With Lone Pine providing such an excellent gateway to Death Valley’s western Panamint Valley, we decided to experience the dramatic western entry that we remembered so well from our 1989 visit.  We discovered that the grand entrance several thousand feet down into the Panamint Valley was still a stunner… 

As we entered the official boundary of the park, we were shocked by the giant roar of a jet plane low behind us.  We then noticed that the jet made a sharp left turn, then dropped down into a canyon!  What was that???

We pulled over to where a group of cars was parked and walked up a short rise to a gathering of professional-looking photographers perched on the canyon rim, 

and discovered that we were at Rainbow Canyon.

The cause of the attraction was the U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots who had been putting on quite a show of low-level flight training within the walls of the canyon!  

Over the next couple of hours, fighters and attack planes approaching at very high speeds dazzled us with noisy “surprise” entrances on either end of the canyon. 

There was something very unnatural watching a jet diving into the canyon, then wiggling through below the rim!

With just seconds to react, it was a challenge to get the “sports shot mode” up and firing away, 

especially when some pilots elected to fly through the canyon the opposite way!

Noticing several different languages being spoken around us that day, it was interesting to observe the reaction of the foreign visitors to this awesome display of U.S. air power.  We chatted for a time with a friendly young British couple who not only were spellbound by this impromptu air show but were astounded by the vast unpopulated areas of the American West.

A slightly different angle to the sun at an overview a short distance down the road highlighted the shadow of this low flyer on the canyon wall.

That was quite an intense couple of hours of very challenging photography that required quick coordination of hearing and sight.  Our hats off to the U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots who put on such a thrilling display of low-altitude skills! 

After lunch in Panamint Springs,

we headed over to Emigrant Canyon

to do a little exploring on back roads 

leading to to the historic architectural feature of the Charcoal Kilns near Telescope Peak.

For only a brief period of time in the late 1870s, these kilns were used to burn piñon pine logs in order to produce charcoal that was needed as fuel for the extraction process of silver and lead at a nearby Hearst family mine.  Almost 140 years later, the inside of the kilns still smelled of creosote.

The beautiful workmanship and precision construction of these ten 25-ft-tall kilns made it well worth the effort we made to get there.  Amazing Air Force and Navy flying skills, along with historic architecture in a very remote, yet strikingly beautiful part of Death Valley, made for a very satisfying day…

The super highs and lows near Lone Pine at two of our most cherished travel destinations—Mt. Whitney and Death Valley—was a fitting way to wind up our memory tour down the eastern Sierras.  Colder nights, shortening days, and whispers of soon-to-come snow in the high country encouraged us to keep moving south.  We had been experiencing a very aggressive travel schedule this past summer and fall, so our next stop for a month in the desert at Borrego Springs seemed like the perfect change of pace.

… As it is near and dear to our hearts, I must close with one more salute to all United States military pilots!

ROCK HUNTING AND A GHOST TOWN NEAR LEE VINING

Carol writes:  As we pulled into our new “home” at a rustic campground well above Mono Lake on the outskirts of Lee Vining, memories of our 1989 stay with our kids in this very same campground came flooding back through the gray cells.  The main difference was that all the trees appeared much taller than we had remembered… and were much more flashy on this brilliant fall day.

Fond 1989 memories of obsidian rock-hunting exploits, along with a cherished visit to our favorite ghost town of Bodie, California, had been carefully preserved for almost three decades.  We planned a replay of some of these prized adventures over a few days with Al’s cousin Rick, a passionate rock hound, and his wife, Roseanne.

When we visited Lee Vining  

in 1989, the city of Los Angeles had pushed Mono Lake to the edge of ecological collapse as a result of excessive diversion of water from four Mono Lake tributaries.  Change needed to happen fast or the entire lake would become a dry lakebed!  

Fast-forward almost three decades…  For us, it was gratifying to see that the Save-Mono-Lake campaign appeared to have been successful.  

On this day in 2018, the size of the lake was no longer receding and instead was steadily moving toward the goal of the 1994 mandated lake level.  The fascinating calcium carbonate tufa formations along the lake shore once again seemed as one with Nature.

The grasslands around the older tufa formations sitting high and dry along the south shore exhibited a healthy and vibrant plant community.

Thankfully, to our inexpert eye, the millions of visitors who have hiked the dirt trails winding through the tufa formations have respected the rules that forbid climbing on these fragile works of Nature.

The fall migratory bird population of grebes appeared to be thriving as they devoured the brine shrimp in Mono Lake’s salty waters.

For our first evening with Rick and Roseanne, dinner consisted of a yummy homemade lasagna that had been hiding out in our motorhome freezer for a few months.  The next day,

the four of us set out for a look around Panum Crater,

and then Obsidian Crater, where we discovered that years and years of public rock-hunting had picked over any choice pieces of obsidian.

Since Roseanne had never been to Yosemite, we decided on a sightseeing drive up spectacular Tioga Pass 

into Yosemite at Tuolumne Meadows 

for a picnic lunch and short hike on that awesome white granite base of Lembert Dome.

As far as we were concerned, the main attraction in the Lee Vining area was the West’s best-preserved ghost town at Bodie State Historic Park.  In my memory, this marked our fourth visit to Bodie, each visit about 15 years apart… 

At 8375 feet of elevation at the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada mountains, Bodie was once notorious as the wildest town in the West. During its heyday from 1877 to the late 1880s, Bodie was a raucous gold and silver mining community with a population that once swelled to about 10,000.

For well over a hundred years, the dry high-desert climate of Bodie has been remarkably efficient at preserving the mining complex

and wooden town structures in a phenomenal state of “arrested decay.”

With a blue backdrop of clear and radiant skies, awesome picture-taking was effortless in Bodie.  The Methodist Church, Bodie’s most famous landmark, continued to slumber in perfect arrested decay on one of Bodie’s now-silent streets.

The Bodie Hotel lobby looked like a pool game had just broken up last week.

The schoolhouse windows

offered a tantalizing peek 

into a schoolroom that resembled those from our generation’s elementary years.

This leaning beauty was still slanted just like it was when Al and I visited as a newly married couple in 1978.

The chaotic coffin display in the mortuary windows was a sober reminder of how frequently such services were needed throughout Bodie’s boom times.

The tombstones in the town cemetery 

reflected the fact that numerous former residents of Bodie had a first-generation European heritage, and many died young.

In my mind, Bodie’s most fascinating feature was the scene of frontier daily life that was so perfectly illustrated through the windows of its buildings.  

Houses and retail shops looked like the inhabitants just rode away one day and never looked back… and that was essentially the way it happened when mining operations suddenly played out at the turn of the 20th century. 

At lunchtime

framed western shots among the ruins were irresistible.

Wow!  That was another all-round perfect visit to the Wild West’s most perfect ghost town of Bodie…

After our visit with Rick and Roseanne, we had another week left to explore a little more around Lee Vining.  Ever since that walk with Rick on the granite slopes of Lembert Dome, we foolishly thought a short climb to the top would be a snap,

until we came to the part 

where steepness and serious safety concerns forced us to reconsider going all the way to the top.  We had a spectacular view of the mountains surrounding Tuolumne Meadows that we had been searching for,

so turning around just short of the summit was an easy and wise decision.

Over the next week a couple of very successful days of obsidian rock-hunting in the hills around Lee Vining

provided just the escape we craved.

Majestic Lee Vining scenery at the gateway to Yosemite and Mono Lake… 

a special visit to our favorite ghost town at Bodie… 

and peaceful lunch spots like this reinforced all the reasons why we had once again come back for another look around Lee Vining.