Lone Pine Area

Before heading out to the Alabama Hills, we made a stop at the Alabama Hills Café so Karen could get a morning munchie. I miss being able to eat there, but such is the result of celiac disease. We took Movie Road and passed up all the neat stops for arches and views of the Sierra crest.

Lone Pine Peak on the left, Mount Whitney in the center back.

I was looking for the location where the scene of the Jericho missile demonstration in Ironman was filmed. I had some GPS coordinates for the area, and I found it fairly easy to match the background mountains, but I couldn’t match up the foreground, which means I wasn’t finding the camera location used in the movie. Here’s a clip from the Ironman movie, followed by my shot. I couldn’t find the foreground rocks behind Robert Downey, Jr.

Clip from Ironman

My shot. Background matches, but the foreground doesn’t

If I go back, perhaps I can find the right camera location and take a selfie with coat and tie.

Then we drove out east across the Owens River to the location of the movie set for Bad Day at Black Rock. There is nothing left—it’s even difficult to see where the old Southern Pacific railroad bed was. I approximated one of the scenes, although I should have been farther away from my truck.

Scene from Bad Day at Black Rock

Main Street still exists, but no buildings or railroad

After all this, we drove out to the Reward mine area. I think we saw about half of the complex, so a return trip is in order.

Part of the Reward Mine

Before returning to our motel, we spent some time at the Manzanar visitor center. The displays have been expanded since we were last there. It is still a sobering reminder of how we can mistreat people in times of crisis.

Links:
Lone Pine, February 2017 photo gallery

1 comment to Lone Pine Area

  • DAVID SHENTON

    Hi. I have my first Whitney trip scheduled later this year. I was wondering if you could share the coordinates for the Jericho missile location. I’d like to get that photo too. Thanks!

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>