After we left Red Rock Canyon NCA, we drove to Death Valley for our annual Desert Pupfish visit. We love them because they’re small, energetic, focused (on reproducing) and – survivors. We took a walk along Salt Creek and there were hundreds of them – I don’t know if we’ve seen that many in past years. If you want to see them, you need to go real soon, because Salt Creek will dry up soon and they’ll all expire 🙁 But – they’ll provide a great bounty for a lot of other hungry animals in the area.
It was a little toasty in DV for our taste so we headed for Lone Pine, but then, because we had a pair of Carol’s climbing shoes to get resoled, we headed to Bishop (where we get shoes resoled at The Rubber Room; they have a mail-in service, too). We spent the night at Upper Gray’s Meadow CG and in the morning went on up into Onion Valley just for sightseeing. At Onion Vally, we met two guys off on a winter peak bagging expedition and two other guys who were putting on skis to do some backcountry skiing. I asked them if they didn’t know about ski lifts, but couldn’t detect a sense of humor.
On the way down from Onion Valley, we got a nice long look at a coyote, close enough that when we barked and howled at him (or her), it looked at us like we were nuts.
On to Bishop, stopped at The Rubber Room then spent a nice, sunny, blustery day exploring the Owens River Gorge and matching our climbing guidebook (Owens River Gorge Climbs) to the various walls. This guidebook seems pretty good; we had no trouble finding and matching walls to routes. Thinking we’d come back tomorrow in “better weather”, we went back into Bishop and stopped at an internet cafe.
I checked the weather; it said a big snowstorm was coming, so we did what anyone who lives where it never snows would do – we went and found a spot up high so we could enjoy the full brunt of the storm. We parked in the Buttermilks, had a nice evening, woke in the night and looked out to see snowflakes (Carol didn’t recognize the sound they made hitting the camper), went back to sleep and woke to a winter wonderland. For which we were singularly unprepared; I only had one pair of shoes; we filled the truck cab with snow while clearing the windshield, etc.
We spent an amazing day enjoying the novelty of snow everywhere on one of our favorite playgrounds. It was especially cool to see the snow so low in the Inyo’s – I’d estimate down to 5-6000 feet – since they sit in the moisture shadow of the Sierra and are much drier.
We went out to the Owens River Gorge thinking it might not have gotten snow, but – wrong. Beautiful, but not tempting at all for climbing.
We headed for Lone Pine thinking if anywhere was going to warm up, Lone Pine would be first.
Side note – if there were any justice, Mount Williamson would be 185′ higher, and therefore the highest in the Sierra, because IMO it’s far more impressive than Mt. Whitney.
We camped to wait it out, but the next day it was bitterly cold and windy, so we bagged the trip and headed for home.
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