:: Eastern Sierras fishing/camping/biking trip ::

:: Saturday, August 9, 2003 @ 9 AM::

We got started a little bit later than we had planned, and part of the reason was that we woke up later than planned and the other part was that we had to get more things ready before we could pack the truck. But we finally got everything together and we headed out of town. We stopped along the way for groceries, gas, and fishing licenses.

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Our route to the Eastern Sierras took us onto highway 120 through Yosemite National Park and Yosemite's Tioga Pass. The views along this stretch of road were magnificent, and we stopped along the way to have lunch. We made turkey sandwiches. Once we were through the park we headed on to Lee Vining and then got onto highway 395 and headed south.

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Our first try at finding a campsite took us to Convict Lake. This is a beautiful little lake set against the Eastern Sierras with dark blue water. The sign leading up to Convict Lake said that it was full, but we decided to give it a try anyway. And you know what? The sign was right. But that's ok, because the campsites weren't that great and they didn't have any showers. Our next try at camping came at McGee Creek. We drove up a road to the more rugged camping area and didn't find anything. As we headed down toward the highway we decided to drive through the RV park to see if they had any campsites. We didn't see any, but we decided to check in the main office. I asked the lady in the office if they had any campsites open and she said campsite 16 was open. So we went and checked it out and decided to take it. I was right on McGee creek and she said that it had just been stocked with trout the day before. She said that they also had a couple of trout ponds that could be fly fished for $10 an hour if we were interested. Once we got our stuff unpacked I started to get the fishing gear ready. I decided to try a spinner with my telescope rod on McGee creek and on my third cast I caught an 11 inch Rainbow trout. Little did I know that this would be the largest fish I would catch on this trip.

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After we were situated in our campsite we decided to go scout out the fishing locations. We drove to Owens River road and went down the dirt road for a few miles. We stopped at a campground that was right on the river. I decided to give the fishing a try there, so I got all my gear ready and walked over to the river from where I parked. But the mosquitoes here were horrible. I haven't seen mosquitoes this bad since being on the tundra in Alaska. I tried to put insect repellant on but it really didn't seem to deter the mosquitoes. So I just decided that I would donate some blood so that I could fish and I went on and fished anyway. Christina couldn't take the mosquitoes anymore so she went back to the truck and watched me fish from a distance. I saw some fish coming to the surface, but they seemed to only be small ones. And since it was getting dark already I didn't have much time to waste, so I started casting where I thought the fish might be. After a few minutes I caught a small brown trout and then moved down stream a little ways. There was no further activity and I decided to pack up and check out the other places. We drove down the dirt road and tried to find other places to access the Owens River but were unsuccessful. We worked our way over to the Big Springs campground and tried looking around for the river. By this time it was too dark to really be able to see anything so we headed back to the highway and then on to our camp at McGee Creek.

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we woke up later than I wanted, but we hurried and ate breakfast and headed for the upper Owens River. We went back to the Big Springs campground and parked by the river and walked downstream a ways. We found a small pool and I had Christina practice putting her fly in the water and studying where the water takes it and how it acts in a river. I demonstrated how to cast and while I was demonstrating I got a hit. Then I spent some time watching her cast and giving her pointers and then we decided to move on. We worked our way downstream about a mile until we came to the private property marker. We stayed at that spot for about an hour and a half trying to catch the fish that we saw. Christina ended up catching a beautiful rainbow trout here, but other than that we had no success on this stretch of the Upper Owens River. It was very challenging for a lot of reasons. First, there were so many trees and so much brush that it was hard to cast fly line any considerable distance. Also, the water ran fairly fast and the pools that the fish were holed up in were deep, not to mention tons of overhanging branches that made it nearly impossible to get a fly down to where the fish were. I used weights on my flies so that I could get my fly to where the fish were, but once I presented the fly to them, they didn't bit. I tried tons of different flies and even tried spinners, but I had no success. We decided to head up river, and along the way we spotted a marmot that was spying on us. We tried a few more spots on the way back to the truck but we didn't have any success.

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After getting our butts kicked we went back to camp, put our things away, and headed to the Mammoth Lakes area. Neither of us had ever been there before, so on the way into the town of Mammoth we decided to check out the visitor center. We saw on one of the message boards that a backpacker was three days overdue. After the visitor center we drove through town and back to see all the lakes in the area. Some of them were gorgeous. We saw that at Horseshoe Lake there was an eruption or something that killed a lot of the trees. They say that there is a lot of Carbon Dioxide in the soil, and as a result it didn't look like anything lived in the lake. There were a lot of people down at the lake with their dogs. After we were done checking out the lake we decided to go check out the Mammoth Ski Resort.

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We drove up the hill and looked at the resort. It seemed a lot like Kirkwood in the sense that there were a lots of lifts spread out over a large area. They much have a shuttle that will take people in between lifts. We decided to keep going uphill and see if we could check out Devil's postpile. Before we attempted to get into Devil's Postpile National Monument we checked out the Minaret Vista. This vista had a good view of Mount Ritter and Banner Peak. I would have taken pictures from this vista, but the sun was in the wrong position. After checking out the vista we moved on to Devil's Postpile National Monument. When we got there we found out that the only way to get into Devil's Post pile was with a shuttle bus and that we probably wouldn't be able to spend enough time there to make it worth our while. On our way back down the mountain we stopped at the Mammoth Ski resort to take a few photos and then decided to take the scenic loop. We were discussing how it wasn't really all that scenic when we decided try mountain biking on the Inyo Crater Loop. This is a 10.5 mile look through Inyo National Forrest. We were riding around the loop when we ran into two people. We talked to them for a few minutes and found out that they both worked for the National Forest Service. They also listened to Grateful Dead music and the girl was drinking beer while they were touring around Inyo National Forest. The guy told us that people liked to come to this section of the National Forest to go four by four off-roading and tear up the plants that were growing in the forest. As we looked around we could see what he was talking about. It looked to me like the vigilante rednecks that lived in Petrolia were down here making a ruckus. We were about to turn around because it was getting to be 7:30 PM, but he recommended we keep going along the trail and said that we still had plenty of daylight. We listened to him and followed his advice. We kept riding and riding. There were some really good parts of the trail, but other parts were really sandy and hard to ride on. We had brought my GPS unit along with us to make sure that we wouldn't get lost and Christina started to get worried once the sun started to go down. I could tell from the tone of her voice that she did not enjoy seeing it get darker while we were away from the truck and weren't really sure where we should go to get to it. So I periodically checked my GPS unit to see how far away we were, but after doing that each time I would immediately turn it off to conserve battery power. Luckily we made it back to the truck before it got pitch black. But that is that last time we listen to National Forest employees.

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We packed up our bikes and went down to town so that we could pick up some olive oil. We used the olive oil to saute the mushrooms and onions that would go with our chili dogs for dinner. I ate too much, but dinner was pretty good.

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We woke up early and realized that we would not be able to shower, pack up camp, go to Lee Vining for muffins, and be able to make it to Hot Creek early. So we decided to shower and then head straight to Hot Creek. We got there a little past 7 AM and began fishing. We went to the section of Hot Creek downstream from the hatchery and upstream from some private land. It looked like only a few hundred yards of stream to fish, and when I first looked at it I thought we would be done fishing in about an hour. We decided to walk downstream to the fence separating the private land from the publicly accessible part and then work our way upstream. It was a little while before we saw any fish, but once we saw them then the real challenge began. Christina got to practice the long casts that she had not been able to practice at the Upper Owens River. She did get tangled up a few times but all in all her technique was vastly improved and she generally got her fly to go where she wanted it to go. I did a lot of casting to a lot of different areas but none of the fish were biting. Throughout our time at Hat Creek I'd guess that I changed my fly more than 10 times. I did finally break through and catch an infinitesimally small rainbow trout on a black ant. We snapped a few photos and then put it back in the water. But other than that, Hot Creek was as dry as could be as far as the fish were concerned. I made the remark to Christina that I would like to go back to Alaska where the fish are dumb. The reason is say that is because on this particular stretch of water the fishing is catch and release only and from what I've read this is one of the most heavily fished streams in California. That adds up to educated and experienced fish. That means that as they grow older they become more and more weary and more and more picky, and as a result it becomes exceedingly difficult for one to catch them. Contrast that with most of the stream in Alaska where most of the fish have never been caught before and you can see why I would prefer to have the "dumb" fish. But overall I enjoyed fishing at Hot Creek. I saw a few nice sized fish and even saw some rising to the surface for my fly, but they missed every time. I will probably go back to Hot Creek again, but next time I will go during the spring or fall and make sure that I spend more time there and talk to the locals. We were done fishing around 9:30 AM.

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After we were done fishing we ran back to camp with our tails between our legs. It took us about an hour and a half to get everything packed up and stowed in the truck. We then checked out of the McGee Creek Campground and were on our way back home.

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We stopped in Lee Vining to see if we could find the famous pumpkin muffins that Christina was talking about. But in between McGee Creek and Lee Vining we took a little detour to June Lakes. There was a little bit of road construction going on and the driving was kind of slow in some parts, but we went around June Lake, Gull Lake, Silver Lake, and Grant Lake. We saw a few waterfalls along the way and the mountains seemed to just shoot up out of nowhere. We worked our way around the loop and back to highway 395. We got back on 395 and headed north to Lee Vining. We looked in the grocery store and of course we were too late. The pastry case looked like a bunch of looters had come through and cleaned it out. So we checked out the gift shop next door. This has to be one of the tackiest gift shops that I have ever been in. They had everything from the typical Yosemite t-shirts to Bodie stuff to old coins and even plastic dragons and dream catchers. I would guess that 90 % of their inventory was made in either Taiwan or Korea. Cheesy and tacky are very good adjectives to describe this shop. After we were done there we decided that we were hungry, so we ate at Nicely's. I got a bacon cheeseburger and Christina got their spaghetti with meat sauce special. We both agreed that she should continue on with her normal policy of not ordering spaghetti anywhere because we can make better spaghetti at home. The sauce was watery and overall it was a little below par for restaurant spaghetti. My cheeseburger was ok. We decided that if we were to eat in Lee Vining again that we would try somewhere else.

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We decided to take a different route home. We went north on 395 and then turned left onto highway 108 which would take us up through Sonora Pass which is at an elevation of 9624 feet. This path also has grades up to 26 %. My truck didn't like parts of this road. The scenery was beautiful. To the south of us was the Emigrant Wilderness and to the north of us was the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness. The road wound around so much that I think it would be easy to get carsick. One thing that we saw on the way up that we didn't expect was a military base. I guess marines go there to train for mountain warfare. And along the road we saw porta potties but they were restricted to marine use only. We stopped at Sonora pass to snap a photo and check out the Pacific Crest Trail. There was also a bathroom there. The road down from the pass was steep and curvy in some places and I'm sure my brakes and gears did not enjoy the trip.

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We stopped at Pinecrest Lake before we hit Sonora. I had never heard of it before and Christina said that she had heard of it and wanted to check it out. When we drove down near the lake I was extremely surprised at the number of cars and people there. The people were everywhere and there were boats all over the lake. This lake looked way to busy for me to ever want to come here and do any camping. It might as well have been the entire bay area here, that's how crowded it was.

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There wasn't much else between Pinecrest Lake and home that was worth mentioning. We got home around 7:30 PM and unpacked the truck and got cleaned up. Overall I had a lot of fun on this trip and would do it again sometime. But next time I know more of what to expect from the Eastern Sierras and I would probably do it in the spring or fall because the fishing will be better then.

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