A rest day in the eastern Sierra

September 4, 2010, 8:36 pm

Given that yesterday was a 13 mile hike up to Sam Mack meadow, and tomorrow is a planned hike to the summit of 14K ft White Mountain, today needed to be a kick-back day. After a leisurely breakfast and then coffee and goodies at Erik Schat’s Bakkery, we headed up to Tom’s Place and then up Rock Creek.

What a zoo! So many people. We took the last parking spot in the overflow area a quarter mile from the trailhead. We ambled up the trail, enjoying the views of the various lakes. At Heart Lake, the trail crosses two creeks in rapid succession. Earlier this year, the first creek crossing was difficult for Karen because of high water—most of the stepping stones were underwater. For the first time, I realize that the topo map shows this creek as very short (maybe a quarter mile long) and apparently originating in a spring. On our next visit, we need to go investigate this.

The second creek tumbles down a steep slope. We climbed up a little ways along this creek, just exploring where it came from. Interestingly, the topo map shows it originating in Ruby Lake, easily reachable by taking the trail to Mono Pass. Next time up there, we need to check out Ruby Lake.

We hiked on to Long Lake, sat on the bank, and ate our lunch. Treasure Lakes are above Long Lake. I wonder if there is a use trail—will have to check it out.

After hiking back to the trailhead, we stopped at Pie in the Sky to see if they had Pecan Chocolate Chip Pie (they didn’t) and then drove on to Mammoth Lakes and had an early dinner at Angel’s Restaurant.

September 4th, 2010 | Category: Outdoors | Leave a comment

Attacking Sam Mack Meadow

September 3, 2010, 10:04 pm

Beautiful high country back there

Today our hiking led us up the north fork of Big Pine Creek to Sam Mack Meadow. On the edge of the meadow is a geocache with a particular difficulty and terrain rating that I need for a geocaching challenge I am working on. It’s not a particularly easy hike, and I had originally planned on going alone. Karen, however, decided she would go with me. She does love the eastern Sierra, but was a bit intimidated by the description of this hike. The starting elevation is approximately 8,400 ft and the meadow is 6.5 miles away at just a little over 11,000 ft.

On regular walks, Karen’s natural pace is faster than mine. Even on our hikes along Rock Creek (over 10,000 ft elevation), she usually walks ahead of me. Today, however, she was slower. We are not sure if she was just having a bad day, or if the steeper climbing was a factor. By the time we got to First, Second, and Third Lake, she was tired.

From Third Lake, the trail climbed steeply to the meadow. We discussed her waiting for me at the bottom of the climb, but that was more disagreeable than the effort of hiking on. Even though I told her the GPS said the cache was less than 0.5 miles away, I’m sure she felt the climb was never going to end.

While Karen cooled her feet in the stream (right off the glacier), I hunted for the cache. I found it fairly quickly, although there have been folks who have been unsuccessful. It was about 2 pm when we started back—later than I had wanted it to be. I’m sure Karen was hurting, but we made it back to the trailhead by 6 pm. She says she will never do another hike like that, but she really had a lot of perseverance to push through her tiredness and discomfort.

The area is in the shadow of the Palisades, a series of 14K ft peaks, and just below the Palisades Glacier, the largest glacier in the Sierras. It’s all incredibly scenic, and I was surprised by the turquoise lakes fed by glacial melt water—very pretty. I’d like to go back and climb just a bit farther to get a good view of the glacier. We could not see it from the meadow.

I realize now I did not take many photos. I was just too occupied with getting us up the trail to the meadow. That’s another reason to return—to capture the beauty in photographs.

Third Lake (I think) with glacial melt water

We got back into Bishop around 7 pm, and were starving. We went right to Whiskey Creek for a meat and potatoes dinner. Pretty good, although pricier than we usually do.

September 3rd, 2010 | Category: Geocaching, Outdoors | One comment

Off to Bishop for some hiking

September 2, 2010, 10:30 pm

This little gold-mining locomotive has seen better days

Because the UC Barcroft Lab near White Mountain is opening the gate on Sunday (shortening the hike to the summit by 4 miles round-trip), we decided to brave the holiday crowds and traffic and spend the weekend in Bishop.

Instead of following our normal route on highway 120 into Yosemite and over Tioga Pass, we stayed on highway 49 at the base of Priest Grade and went to Coulterville, which is in Mariposa County. It turns out I have never logged a cache in Mariposa County. There is an easy cache at this old mining locomotive. We also tried a multi-cache (because it was in an old cemetery), but it proved too time consuming hunting for the intermediate way-points.

Bennettville, near Tioga Pass

Just over Tioga Pass we parked at the turnoff to Saddlebag Lake and hiked up to Bennettville, an old mining town that still has a couple of buildings being kept in a state of arrested decay. The geocache here was easy to find, and the location was pretty. We continued on up the creek to a pretty little lake. This area deserves another visit and a longer hike up the creek to more lakes.

We stopped at Whoa Nellie Deli for a late lunch/early dinner and shared a plate of fish tacos, which didn’t strike our fancy as well as it has in the past. Then, after checking in to our motel in Bishop, we had a nice dinner at Amigos.

September 2nd, 2010 | Category: Geocaching, Outdoors | One comment
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