Friday morning dawned bright and clear. A beautiful day for a drive if I’ve ever seen one. I got the kids up and off to school and then headed out the door… jackets, gloves and other assorted pieces of gear falling out of my arms. Just as I pull the door shut behind me a friend pulls up and wants to visit. After a few minutes I convince him that I HAD to go and escaped to the road. YAY… oh wait.. grocery stop… road YAY… oh.. wait… gas station… NOW.. Finally… NORTHWARD BOUND!!!! YAY! However every dark cloud (including my delayed leaving) has a silver lining. This particular lining presented itself in the form of NO traffic! Cruise control… windows down... radio up… and I was GONE!
I had received for Christmas a book on the geology of the Owens Valley and Death Valley areas, directions, descriptions and neat stories included. Reading through the book I had decided to make a couple of sidetrips on my way up to Bishop. One of them was to be at Searles Lake to look at the Trona Pinnacles. My late start nixed this stop, but I figured that was Ok. The other stop was scheduled to be at
Fossil Falls, located just up the 395 from Little Lake. This is a place in the lava flow where the Owens River carved and chipped and chiseled at the frozen lava until it had created a waterfall. Of course, as there is no longer an Owens River there.. the falls are dry.. but spectacular all the same. I had the place to myself for the first minute or so… but was very shortly joined by three other groups of people. Leaving there I saw the signs for the Little Lake Overlook and decided to continue down the dirt road to see what could be seen. I mean, really, how many people have driven past Little Lake on a calm day and seen the columnar basalt reflected in the smooth green glasslike surface and wished for a place to pull over, right? Well… fading light and uncertainty in my ability to navigate the dirt road turned me back less then a mile down the washboard dust surface. Deciding I didn’t need that particular stop anyways I hit the paved surface of the 395 and motored northward again. About 1800 I arrived at the Moose Lodge and very happily stretched my legs. Moosie and I sat up visiting and catching up while waiting for her other friend who was crashing at the Lodge for the weekend to arrive. Melody was using the Moose Lodge as a base of operations for her weekend long Avalanche course. She finally arrived… we were introduced… Moose and I settled our plans for the following day and we all crashed.
Saturday Moosie and I got up bright and (not-so) early… breakfast at The Petite Pastry (can you say YUMMO??? If you’re through there stop and have a bite… say hi to Jay the owner.. he’s a great guy!) and then further north to Mammoth. I had been on this section of freeway a time or two before so knew some of the very distinct landmarks (Mammoth Mtn, Hot Creek Springs, etc.) but having Moose as a tourguide puts a wonderful new twist on it all. We arrived in town with the intention of parking in town and hitting the shuttle up to the Main Lodge. As we drove through town, however, Moosie starting musing aloud that perhaps we could get parking up by the Lodge. There were not so many people in town and, for a holiday weekend, it was very quiet.
We parked just downhill from the Main Lodge, grabbed our
gear and headed up the road. We got onto the snow and Moosie commented about the lack of skiers. Starting the
road towards Minaret Summit, Moose put up with sinking in the snow exactly 3 times before uttering a rather unladylike word and stopping to put her snowshoes on. Me, being the novice initiate, followed suit… shortly there after we were trudging along on top of the snow and ice… and I was trying very hard to not step on the backs of my own shoes… (Hey.. it’s harder then it sounds.. believe me!). What a new feeling… being on top of the snow instead of in it.
I had been on this road before, driving a car, in the warm summerness of July… but this time… with snow up to the bottom of the road elevation signs… was an entirely new experience. Moosie told me “You never really know a road until you’ve walked it”… and boy was she right. In a car it’s a blink… a bend… and whatever it was that caught your eye is gone. On foot… you feel the road beneath your feet… whatever that is over to the side is a few extra steps towards exploring. The other people on the road are new friends and not blurs passing in another steel box. We strolled the mile and a half up to the
Minaret overlook and stopped for a breather there (well… I stopped to gasp for some sort of oxygen flow into my lungs… Moosie stopped to take pictures).
Taking time, light and everything else into consideration we decided to travel further along the ridgeline, just to see where we could get. We were both looking for 10,000’ this weekend and knew it was just over those little rises in the mountain. The weather was so beautiful that we had both long since shed our long-sleeved outerwear and were in our short-sleeves soaking up the sun. We walked along for another couple of miles throwing cheesy movie lines at each other, stopping to chat with some snowmobiler’s who had stopped to snack on the hot dogs they had cooked on their engines, and generally enjoying the time/place/company! At one point Moose checked her altimeter and realized we were just shy of 10K… we grinned at each other like silly fools and got up the rest of the way. Final altitude for the day 10,172’.. WOOHOO!!!!!!! There were these guys up there.. they had packed these huge
parasail kite thingies up there along with their snowboards… and they were surfing over the snow… pulled by the wind. It was awesome watching them and they made it look so effortless and fun.
After a few minutes we headed back down and towards the TOF. However…. Laura wasn’t quite ready to head south yet. After getting into the TOF and warming back up we headed down into town, watching the sunset on the snowcapped peaks around us. The next hour or so entailed hitting every gear supply shop in town. Moosie introduced me to more of the locals (I think she knows EVERYbody who lives in the Owens Valley) and we each picked up a couple of things. Finally we were homeward bound and ready to call it a day. Pre-dawn plans for Sunday had us scooting towards bed shorting after arriving back at the Moose Lodge.
Now.. usually when you start talking about a new day you would say something like “Sunday dawned…” and then describe it, right? Well… Sunday started before dawn for us. The alarms went off at “this isn’t really a time” early and we rolled out, bundled up, and hit it. The plan was to drive the hour or so to Mono Lake and catch the sunrise. As we drove north on the 395 there was very little conversation, but the silence was comfortable. Old friends who don’t need to talk to fill the space. I spent most of the drive watching out the passenger side window, marveling at how, even a full hour before sunrise, the eastern sky was beginning to
lighten. I still can’t get over how slow the process is. Down here in the flatlands sunrise is sunrise. The sky begins to noticeably lighten about 20 minutes before the orb itself pops over the horizon. Up in the Sierra… oh what a different story.
So… we get to Mono and Laura starts scouting places to set up her tripod and camera equipment. I have a little point and shoot, so I am wandering around… enough light already to take pictures of stuff. After a little bit Moose says “Here it comes” in an almost whisper and I look at her, only to find her pointing to the west. Now… I don’t know about anyone else.. but I’ve always been taught that the sun rises in the east… thusly… you watch sunrise in the east. Right? Oh no… I was so wrong. I turned in the direction of Laura’s pointing finger and saw the tiptop of Mt Dana beginning to
glow pink. I watched in silence as the sun steadily highlighted the snowy mountains to the west of me…. watched as those mountains preened in the glass smooth surface of the lake at my feet. I wondered in amazement as I witnessed small clouds of fog appear between the tufu in the water… and held my breath as I listened to the lake stretching itself in the warming morning air… creaks, groans, and a thump or two as the air warmed. Being the flatlander that I am, however, I had to look east once or twice, just to see the bright orb of the
sun itself… almost to reassure myself that it was real.
We took our time walking back to the car snapping picture and admiring the way that the
hoary frost coated everything. At one point Laura ran back to the TOF to get her other camera lens and I stood next to a tufa that was coated in this frost. Have you ever watched frost melt? It is the most graceful thing I think I have ever seen. As the sun slowly warmed this one small knob on the tufa, the frost began a ballet dance worthy of the most talented troope. So so slowly a single piece of the frost would begin to bend over… as if tenderly reaching for its base… just as it reached bent double the flake of frost would do a pirouette before dissolving into a single drop of water. I could have sat there all morning watching this dance. However… breakfast at Nicely’s was calling and my stomach was protesting the early start with no food. SO… back to the TOF. Stop to talk to the nice Park Ranger “Yup Girls… my thermometer said it was 9 degrees” (9 degrees? Is that really a temperature?) , and then in the car and on the road to Lee Vining for breakfast.
We discuss our options for the next grand adventure while eating, and decide that there is little enough snow we might be able to get up to Bodie. We finish breakfast, back into the TOF and back on the road. The gate across the road up to Bodie is closed… but there is a little side
“lane” around the gate and the road looks clear. Moosie decides that we’ll go as far as we can and see what we can see. What an excellent decision. The roads are clear, the views are breathtaking and we stop occassionally to take pictures. Of particular note is the frozen ice
“flow” about halfway up the road. We discuss possibilities of how it was formed and this pretty much takes up the last couple minutes of the drive. We are basically alone, there is one other vehicle in the parking area and a couple of ranger trucks. We walk around together for a minute or two, but are very soon drawn in our own directions. Almost an hour goes by before I see Moosie’s orange jacket again… the silence in this once vividly alive town is almost deafening. The
voyeuristic aspect of being a tourist in a dead town like this was almost creepy, but things were so real .. so there that I kept expecting to hear the whicker of a horse or the bawl of a cow. For awhile I sat on the wooden boardwalk on Main Street and just listened. My minds eye brought the town to life and for a minute I could smell the horses and dust, I could hear the people and the activities of the mine… in my minds eye the
school bell rang and the laughter of children racing each other to the school house echoed into reality as a family with small children arrived to visit the town.
We spent the better part of the day in Bodie. Sometimes walking together… sometimes exploring on our own. I think we each had our own movie playing in our heads about what used to be in the town (my movie kept having John Wayne’s voice echoing in it!).
After leaving Bodie and it’s ghosts behind us, we headed south again and stopped in June Lake at the Tiger Bar for a drink and nachos. A short stroll up and down the street proved that almost nothing was open, so we got back in the TOF and headed back to the Moose Lodge.
Monday morning I had to head back home and return to reality. A short stop at the Hostel to see some artwork I heard rumor of… a nice chat with Doug Sr (again.. great to see you Doug! Keep up the good work and thanks for the hints about the JMT and resupply strategies!) A short drive out the Portal Road to take a peek at that as of yet elusive peak. And then home… Thanks MOOSIE!!!!
Quotes for the weekend:
“Oh.. did I forget to mention we could have gotten a ride in a snowcat to the summit? My bad.” Laura… when I gave the snowcat full of passengers slowly making its way towards Minaret Summit a funny look (I thought it was going to groom the trails or something).
“Oh MY .. A jeep full of MEN!! I have to fix my HAIR!!!!” At Bodie when a jeep full of men pulled up while we were snacking on the tailgate of the TOF. One of us said it… the other thought it… I ain’t admitting which was which.
“Ok.. you gotta share the joke Girls”… one of the guys from the Jeep when the previous statement sent both of us into gales of laughter.
The rest of the pics are here:
Fossil Falls,
Minaret Summit,
Mono, and
Bodie,
LOL 
