A Week on the East Side: Exploring the Eastern Sierra

The week didn’t start so well. I’d planned to hike every day, getting used to the altitude. But as I drove through Yosemite on Monday, the 4th of July, I couldn’t find any trails. My first choice was blocked by a chilly arm of Tenaya Lake; when the water reached my shorts, I gave up. The next trailhead had simply disappeared, lost in a maze of blocked-off “Closed for the Season” roads (last season, presumably). The third started off across deep snow.
In the end, I just wandered on Tioga Pass – nearly 10,000 feet – and headed down the east side. A photogenic surprise: Tioga Lake was still covered in ice, pieces of mountains reflected between the chunks.

At the first campground, Lake Mary – reserved in the last minute through Recreation.gov – my site was surrounded by other campers. That didn’t stop a bear from investigating my bear box. Sitting by the fire just fifteen feet away, I’d foolishly failed to lock it. I shouted, and she went away. A bit more shouting, and her cub in the tree above my table was gone as well. I locked the box, and then locked myself in the car to sleep.

The next morning, I rejected two more snow-covered trails. A third was blocked off: “Carbon dioxide hazard area” – at least that made a change from high water and snow. I gave up on the Mammoth Lakes area and headed south to Rock Creek, recommended by the woman who’d sold me my boots at REI.

This was an easy hike, not too steep, starting above 10,000 feet and rising gently past picturesque little lakes. But the day was overcast – dull pictures – and my feet and knees ached. Maybe this wasn’t going to work. Maybe at sixty I’m simply too old to hike. I tried to believe I was having fun, but I wasn’t convinced.

But that evening, heading up the White Mountain road, things felt different. I like deserts. I like them a lot – but Joshua Tree and Death Valley are too hot by summer. Yet here was a desert – sage brush, junipers, pinyon pines – on top of a mountain. The flowers were only beginning to bloom. At the Grandview Campground (8,500 feet; free, but a $5 donation), we few campers encircled a sage flat, talking when we met. That evening, driving up a rocky track to chase the sunset, I felt in my element again.

I spent Wednesday exploring. Beyond the first Bristlecone Pine Grove at around 10,000 feet, the road continues toward the Patriarch Grove at 11,000. Snow blocked car access, so the road became a hiking trail. A loop trail took me up the Cottonwood Overlook.

Maybe I was a bit affected by the altitude – it was only afterwards, seeing my pictures, that I realized just how other-worldly that landscape had been: white dolomite rocks, golden tree trunks, black storm clouds.

Later, I drove north across tundra-like landscape to the locked gate. Beyond, a seven-mile track led to the top of White Mountain at 14,246 feet – less than 250 feet lower than Mt. Whitney. I didn’t follow it. Instead, I drove back to my campground, where the rain attacked just after dinner. The passenger seat was as comfy as my easy chair at home, and I was content downloading pictures and catching up on the day.

When I awoke in my Subaru on Thursday, the sky was clear. Without waiting, I drove up to the Sierra View Vista Point. Once I’d photographed the mountains, I heated a kettle and fried my egg and sausage – breakfast at the viewpoint! And then I re-visited the first Bristlecone grove and charged up the Discovery Trail, knees and lungs and feet all working just fine.

“I’m ready for backpacking!” I told Rhiannon a bit later, calling from the Sierra View overlook. (“If you can see Bishop, your phone should work,” someone had told me.)

But that afternoon, I wasn’t so sure. My trail in the Sierra Range above Big Pine started at around 7,200 feet – much too low for an afternoon hike. Despite stunning views of red paintbrush and yellow Lomatium, it was hot, and I felt just as slow as ever.

By Saturday morning – after meetings near Mammoth Lakes, where I was told at the motel to empty my car of food because of bears – I was ready for another hike: Piute Pass, up from North Lake above Bishop.

This trail started at 9,300 feet, rising gently through aspen forest to switchbacks below the first lake. This time I had perfect weather; the lakes were a brilliant blue. Yellow columbine and rosy sedum lined the path.

I talked with everyone. “Follow the dirty snow,” someone said – that was the trail. The pass was do-able, others reassured me: “Lots of snow, but there’s nothing sketchy about it.” “You’re almost there,” a young couple with a Sheltie dog told me. “Don’t turn back now.”

And so I continued. As passes go, it was pretty easy, even at 11,400 feet. I worked my way from rock outcrop to outcrop, crossing pocketed snowfields, following footprints up to the pass itself.

And from the top? – it was the view I’d seen from the plane so long ago: white-sheeted mountains, a frozen lake. I admired it, eating peanuts and cheese, and then started back down. The late-afternoon light inspired more and more pictures. As I trudged east down the trail, the sun seemed to hang without moving over the pass; the moon moved closer and closer to the golden-lit rocks.

It was a long day – eleven hours. Somewhere I’d gained a second wind. Maybe it was the practice hikes in the White Mountains. Or maybe I was inspired and rejuvenated by the mountain light itself.

For the last part of the trip, I used my headlamp (“Do you have a headlamp?” someone had asked me – Yes, always). And as I came down through the trees, the headlamp and the half moon shone on the aspen trunks. The bark gleamed white ahead of me, lighting the way to my car.