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!
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