I heard about the Owens Lake Trails earlier this year and added these to my to-do list during cool weather. I’d been jonesin’ to sleep in the back of my truck and start re-training and strengthening my leg status post breaking the fibula in August. So, I headed to the Hills Friday night and toured the Owens Valley Lake Trails on Saturday. A nice guide book is available at the Interagency Visitor Center and online
here.
The Owens Lake Trails are short walks at 3 different areas: 1) at the north end SE of the Boulder Creek entrance 2) at the NE end north of Keeler and 3) at the south end near Dirty Socks. Each entry point has an information kiosk near the paved road junction.
The information board was the same at Boulder Creek and The Plaza, which was disappointing as I was hoping to see new information (I missed the Dirty Socks entrance because I drove down Brady Hwy).
The artwork at each trailhead was fitting for the area, with round metal shade structures designed to look like a cross section of the Aqueduct, with the addition of “thorns” on the top to keep the birds away. Interesting that I found bird dung on the seat inside one of the “pipes” – I guess they appreciate the shade too.
The artwork at The Plaza was pretty cool. Four pathways inlaid in the cement point to Olancha Peak, Mt. Langely, Mt. Whitney, and Keeler Peak, with name and elevation listed in the cement.
After visiting The Plaza, rather than tracing my ingress, I headed to Brady Hwy. There aren’t road signs on the Lake so I purely guessed that I was on the correct road. I enjoyed this drive as there are ponds that are red and ponds that are green – interesting. I never did see the junction with the Dirty Socks road, but could see the familiar “pipe” artwork off in the distance so knew I was headed in the correct direction. The brochure instructs the user to follow the markers... the only place I saw markers was on The Plaza trailhead.
From the Dirty Socks trailhead, I headed west across a berm then connected with the Brady Hwy and followed it a short distance to the 395.
I never did much walking, other than at The Plaza, mostly because there wasnt much to see and the information kiosks were much the same.
All in all, Im glad I took the time to do this. I imagine birders will really enjoy this...I didn’t see a great variety on my tour
