Eastern Sierra day hikes for 2012

It has been too long since we have been to the eastern Sierras. In fact, the last time was in January and our destination was actually Death Valley.

We headed over to Mammoth, but stopped for a short hike to Gaylor Lakes. The trailhead is right at the east entrance to Yosemite. The altitude (over 10K ft), the steepness of the trail, and age all combined to make this feel hard. But, I think it helped us acclimate. I wasn’t impressed with the lakes, but there were some good views of the rugged peaks to the south-west, including Cathedral Peaks. From Upper Gaylor Lake it is just a bit farther (although more climbing) to the Great Sierra Mine, an old silver mine in the late 1800’s. We didn’t go there, but logged almost 3 miles with 1,000 ft of climbing.

We spent the night in Mammoth and then headed to the Mosquito Flat trailhead along Rock Creek in the morning. It was breezy, cloudy (with a few sprinkles here and there), and cool. We had a couple of choices of hikes, and decided to climb up to Ruby Lake. This was a 4.5 mile hike with 1,000 ft of climbing. We climbed slowly but I didn’t feel the altitude effects as much as the first day at Tioga Pass. Afterwards, we indulged in a piece of chocolate pecan pie at Pie in the Sky Café—delicious.

After another night in Mammoth, we returned to Mosquito Flat trailhead for perhaps our favorite hike into the Little Lakes Valley. Although the hike starts at 10,200 ft elevation, the 7.5 mile round-trip hike seems fairly easy, even though our destination, Gem Lakes, was over 11,000 ft. The scenery of the mountain peaks, lakes, streams, and meadows is incredible.

We spent the night in Bishop and then headed to Lake Sabrina for a 6.5 round-trip hike up to beautiful Blue Lake. Along the way we met a friendly guy doing video interviews of hikers—seems to be his hobby of recording and then putting it on YouTube. Check out our snippet at 50 seconds in on this recording.

The next day we headed south on 395 with breakfast in Lone Pine and then a quick drive out into the Alabama Hills to check out the views of Mount Whitney.

Links
—Eastern Sierra July 2013 photo gallery