Big Bear to Lone Pine: Rocking the High Desert

My Gossamer Gear LT3’s in the high desert

Hello all from the Eastern Sierra, 750 miles in!

The weather has turned horrendous right before we hit the highest point of the Sierra, so we decided to take 10 days off to visit the Eastern Sierra, where I spent 3 summers researching and doing a lot of hiking (quite similar to this year).   Why time off?  To see Kat (my sister), who is driving from LA, experience the East Side Hot Springs (views of snow capped mountains, full moon, hot water, and mooing cows you can’t see), and to see one of my favorite bands, Blue Turtle Seduction, play right over beautiful Mono Lake.  Sigh!  I feel like I’m home!

This here is cattle country

We’ve been outrageously blessed on this trail by kind people who live in the communities along the trail. In Onyx, CA, a small, low income desert town, a kind hippie lady let us stay at her house for the night, fed us, sang 60’s songs, and took care of us as we waited out a storm. A guy we met on the bus in Bishop let us stay at his house, and footed our dinner bill at a fairly expensive restaurant in Bishop. He said he had spent his youth gallivanting in the outdoors, and this was giving back. A hiker we met coming off Cottonwood Pass said he’d wait for us in the parking lot and took us to Lone Pine. Hiking is a wonderful way to see all the goodness in this world.

They’ve got some tiny windmills on this trail.

Now that we’re in the freezing Sierra, it’s hard to believe we were ever in the 100 degree desert.  We’ve had two black widow run-ins: the scariest being a black widow hanging right above us in a cave where we took a nap near Cajon Pass.  We also ran into a mother bear and three very small, adorable cubs.  Quite scary.

The Sierra has had quite a big, abnormal, late snow dump (snowing as I write this). It should be an adventure heading back there!