Day 3 of my Bear Creek trip saw me rise at first light, followed by a leisurely morning consisting of several cups of coffee and a light breakfast as I watched the creek tumble over Twin Falls. There was literally no sign of the previous night’s rain – everything I could see looked completely…
Day 2 of my solo trip up Bear Creek saw me up and about before sunrise, enjoying my morning coffee while the first rays of sunlight hit the ridges around me and gradually illuminated my campsite. By 8am, I was ready to head out upstream and explore my little valley – indeed, I believe…
This trip wound up being a solo affair, and I’ll write in the first person for a change. The hike up Bear Creek has been on my radar for several years now, the biggest obstacle being negotiating the 2.2-mile 4wd road leading from Mono Hot Springs to the Bear Creek Diversion dam. Earlier in…
Saturday of our weekend camping trip near Bishop found us shaking off the chilly morning in camp with coffee and a light breakfast, followed by a drive into Bishop where we stopped at Schaat’s to get some lunch for the trail. Today’s destination was Little Lakes Valley, where Chris, Jane, and Pedro had done…
Over the winter into spring, Chris had obtained four different permits to backpack in various eastern Sierra locations, and, for a semi-comedic series of obstructive events, ended up having to cancel each one of them in turn. The last of the scheduled trips was to be a loop out of Mammoth Lakes over Duck…
Although the skies above were clear this morning, we decided to get an earlier start in case it got smoky later on. We were all up by 6:30am, so we had a few hours to relax before breaking camp, and we were packed and ready to roll by 9:00. We had a couple of…
We had originally scheduled our Cottonwood Lakes trip for three nights, since Chris expected at least one full day would be watching Carter fish the different lakes throughout the basin. However, Carter and Dani both had things to do on Monday, and we decided to spend just two nights in the backcountry – this…
Early in the year, Chris had applied for Labor Day weekend permits both in Mineral King and Cottonwood Lakes – successful in getting both, he eventually selected the Cottonwood Lakes option for the easier drive and the easier trail, plus the fact that Carter could fish more at the latter destination. Although we had…
We had talked about various options for our third day, including staying another night since Chris had added it to our permit just in case – in the end, we decided to head out today. Jane still had her heart set on a fish lunch, so we came up with a plan to try…
We wandered out of camp about 2:00pm, not entirely sure of our plan once we got to wherever it was we didn’t know where we were going. The old USGS topo map shows a trail leading southward from Lake #3’s west ridge up to Lake #5 atop the next higher bench, and we had…