Dan rants: Sierra Trip

panorama over Grant Lake

Despite my aversion to children and marriage, there is a woman whose face causes me to think thoughts of offspring and lifelong commitment. This isn't a rational sequence of thoughts, and thankfully over the years I've learned to balance that obsessive encoding deep in my genes with a healthy dose of rational skepticism, but that reaction still shocks me when it comes up.

The eastern Sierra have a similar effect.

The first time I limped my crippled car over "Oh! Ridge" and down into June Lake looking for a mechanic I was ready to sell everything I had, live in a tent, and maybe resurrect my pottery throwing skills so I'd have something to sell to the tourists.

I've ended up back there several times since, sometimes planned, sometimes because it was only two hours away and beat camping in the cold.

This Thanksgiving, Charlene, Jeanne, Jeanne's kids Alec and Zack, and Joe, a friend of theirs, and I made the trek out there for a few days. Wednesday evening we were tooling down 395 with the heater turned on full and the sunroof open, gaping at the wide sky, and the stars, through the clear thin air.


ducks We got a few rooms at the June Lake Villager , complete with kitchens, to stuff ourselves with good food and enjoy the outdoors. We were not disappointed.


brown butterfly On Thursday while we waited for the turkey to smoke and the cranberry sauce to reduce we wandered down to the lakes to look at the ducks, tramp along the shore through the reeds noticing the butterflies or moths (the difference seems to be like fruits versus vegetables, dependent mainly on context).


frozen creek frozen creek detail On Friday I convinced the group that to find snow we could hike up to Fern or Yost lake, so we headed up the trail. This will not appear in the annals of good judgement, while I'm relatively adaptable and can handle hiking at 7,500 feet after a day of acclimation from sea level (and I daresay could have when I was 14, here endeth the first of my "when I was a kid" geezer rants), the others weren't up to it. So at the junction between the trails to Fern and Yost lakes they called this creek a goal and headed back down to play in the snow in a flatter spot, and Charlene and I headed for Yost lake.


charlene charlene's feet in Dan's stomach But Charlene is not a high performance hiker either, and trudging through the unbroken snow was taking its toll on her knees, so when we cleared the plateau and realized that the lake wasn't close to the lip, we found a dry spot, warmed her feet on my stomach, and I went on.


frozen Yost lake I'll try to get the panorama of this stitched at some point, but cold, and thinking of the limp back down the hill with Charlene's knee bothering her while racing the sunset, I didn't get a chance to appreciate the lake.


Dan by Tufa Saturday was Alec's birthday. Last year Charlene and I had given the boys the makings of a potato cannon, and we went off in search of a safe place to fire it. On the way we passed by Mono lake and stopped at the south tufa, I dragged the big cameras around and hopefully will have some good slides from the day's adventures.


more Tufa This was a tremendous reaffirmation of my decisions about children, the boys were all psyched about launching spuds and running about the tufa and in and out of other people trying to enjoy the scenery engaging in snowball fights, while I wanted to stop and look.


more Tufa The Sierra are formed by the plate that's California pushing up over the plate that's Nevada, so along the east side there's crack that runs down to the lava. This creates lots of hot and mineral rich springs. Mono lake used to be quite a bit higher, and these springs bubbled up under the lake, leaving tubes of calcified deposits.


more Tufa When LA built the aqueducts in the 40s that sucked the Owens valley dry and pulled a lot of the water that otherwise would have maintained Mono's level, the lake drained, and these tubes were exposed. Now that LA's been restrained a bit Mono lake is slowly refilling and the towers are covered with water once again.


boys and potato cannon So afterwards we drove west for a while (next town is 45 miles away) to find an out-of-the-way spot to launch spuds. Lots of fun was had.


sunset on the range of light It was Alec's birthday, and Jeanne wanted to get some things for him, so we headed south over the pass to Mammoth. But Mammoth is the worst parts of Tahoe and LA combined, and was the rude awakening that convinced me that I didn't need to live in that desolate beautiful area, so Charlene and I went for the sights instead, and caught this sunset over the range of light on the way out of town to head back to June Lake.


raccoon That night we had several masked marauders roming the decks around the hotel.


sunrise The next morning Charlene woke me early, and I ran outside to catch the sunrise. I've actually got too many shots of nice light from this location 'cause it's the closest place to the hotel that doesn't have wires or trees in the way of the sun, I definitely need to start getting to the right spots before the interesting light happens and waiting for the good images.


Bodie So we started the trek back, but on the way stopped at Bodie, an old mining town that was abandoned in the 1940s and turned into a state park in the '60s. I want to go back and spend quite a bit more time exploring it

Bodie Bodie Bodie

So that's how I spent my Thanksgiving vacation.


Tuesday, November 28th, 2000 danlyke@flutterby.com