05/09/11

Today is Monday 05/09/11.
Last Thursday we went up to Mammoth Lakes to see the city with Tom and Pam, the main Lodge Hosts. We wanted to visit a second hand store they knew of for some snow clothes and boots that we could work in. The town was the typical ski resort town with condos and homes and lots of stores to cater to the vacationing skiers. Tom and Pam showed us all the good places to shop and eat, where we could get good deals known to the locals and a store that takes used clothing, ski stuff, furniture and most anything and all proceeds go to the local hospital. The stuff was CHEAP! Mo and I bout 3 pair of ski pants, snow boots for Mo and 3 pair of gloves for $25.00. A good start, still a few more things to get though, so we decided to check back the next week.  After that we went up the road as far as we could heading for the Crystal Crag Lodge.
Here's a few pics of when we got to the end of the road...

Here is the 'end' of the road, or as far as was plowed. Actually, it has melted some here, once it is plowed and the sun can get to it, it melts more quickly.

This is Tom standing next to the plow cut. The Lodge is still about 2 miles further up the road.

This is looking up the mtn to Tom's right.

There's rules for everything, I guess.

This is deceiving, the snow doesn't look deep but that's actually a sheer drop off!

Last week, after I ran the Rock Creek trail, Mo and I thought we were going to hike the Lower Rock Creek trail on Friday but as it turned out, we decided to go up to an area that is world widely know for boulder climbing. It's about 8-10 miles west of Bishop so we got our water, camera, map and GPS and took off.  You access the area by a washboard dirt road that is wide and well used. This was a weekday so we didn't expect to much activity, here's a few pictures.....

We started seeing these rock formations and thought this would be it, but, it wasn't.

It sure did look like some good rocks to climb and maybe they were climbed but not that day.

THIS was a big rock, sitting all by itself. the one behind it looks like it broke off but when you look at them, they don't fit. That's me standing at the base to give some perspective to the size. We stopped here because there were cars parked at the road, however we only got a glimpse of someone walking up to this rock.

These boulders looked like they could just roll right on down the hill, and I guess that's what they did a long time ago.

These are actually beautiful white flowers covering this bush right at the base of the boulder.

We found these two guys working the back of the boulder.

The guy in the orange would start out sitting on the ground and then climb as far as he could, hanging upside down at times, falling off time after time. Never did see him get much over 10' high.

They have a pad under the one climbing and the spotter stays close by to break the fall.

More flowers blooming in the desert around the boulders.

We turned around when we heard some voices and there was this guy on top of another boulder. He jumped over to the other smaller on, there was a gap of about 5-8 ft between them.

Still trying...........

we moved up the hill to watch these two guys, they were a bit more experienced, and older. They sounded like they were speaking Italian.

They were holding onto the rock with fingertips and toes......

After they got to a point, it seemed they just about ran up the rock.

Mr Lizard

We decided to move along and see what else was around, we knew the road went back up into the White Mtns and eventually came back out on the Hwy so why not?

We stopped along side the road and Mo took this shot of a meadow full of flowers. This is about 6,000' high.

This 'road' got rougher and rougher. We went through rocky areas and then muddy areas, desert and forest. Here we forded a creek that came up to the bottom of the doors. I think this was the third creek, the others were smaller, thank goodness!

Looking back down over where we came from.

Some of the views, as you will see, were incredible.

Here we're almost to the end and riding on a ridge about 15' wide, straight down on both sides. Across the way (south) there was a straight road that went to that beautiful meadow at the base of the mountain, maybe a horse pasture?

Here's the ridge road, you could look right or left and see for miles!

These were the mtns looking right, south.

These were looking left, north. The rock mtn in the center of the picture is Grouse Mtn, we came all the way around it from the other side, that's where the boulders were.

 We finally came down off the ridge by way of switch backs to the hwy. We had a great time exploring and seeing more of God's amazing planet Earth.
 Saturday we walked all over town, one of the great things about Bishop, and shopped all the thrift stores for more cheap cold weather work clothes. We found a few more and decided we'd go back up to Mammoth next week, that store there had some nice stuff, cheap. There also was a home show, gem show and other events here at the Fairground where we're staying so we walked around it. They had a huge flea market but it cost to enter so we nixed it. Mo spent time with Pam learning the reservation program, of course she caught on real quick, which Pam appreciated. They will work well together.
Mass at 4pm here on Saturday.
Sunday we decided to ride out and see the Petroglyphs. They are ancient symbols and pictures carved into the lava rocks that flowed here many centuries ago. Some have been vandalized but recently they have come under the protection of the Park service and heavy fines and jail time are in force now for removing, or tampering with them.

Don't know if you can make it out but this whole rock is covered with lines and drawings

This one shows up a little better. there were more but it was real windy, this whole area is called a volcanic tableland. Lots of the rocks are volcanic lava flow that hardened after it cooled and it left weirdly shaped rocks and formations.

Here's a couple of pictures.....

There was lots of these formations all around this area, some of the holes were deep, they would go back into the rock a couple of feet, seemed like a good place for a rattle snake!
Since it was windy we figured we would just explore from the comfort of the Jeep. Mo was driving and we found a good road turning off and took off across country. We didn't know where we were going but we had the GPS so we weren't worried.
Here we go.......

The road we took off on was a desert double track, just wide enough for a 4WD. there was desert all around us with lots of wild flowers blooming out. Mo was driving and I don't take as many pictures as she does but I tried to get a few good ones.

These are trying to show the yellow flowers in the foreground but also on the hillside in the distance. That was the predominate bloom.

Looking at the Mtns in the distance, that's a canyon between. It's hard to show a canyon in a picture!

These orange ones were pretty, there were also purple and white ones.

This picture is out of place but it is one of some more petroglyphs. To far away to see them though.

Looking out over a canyon. The Jeep road was following this canyon, on the GPS it showed the road somehow getting past it and ending up back on hwy 395, so we kept on going.

We came from the base of those mtns.

Well the road dead ended at the canyon. We got out and walked over and looked down into the canyon, it was dry and narrow along the bottom. Someday we'll come back and explore the bottom some.

The dead end road.

 So we turned around and backtracked to the main road and, undeterred, we found another one further down and off we go again. Mo was having a good day, it was Mothers Day after all.

This road was Chidago Canyon Road. here we are going into a very narrow rock pass

These pics don't tell the tale, here we're coming into a section about 200yards long that was door to door narrow. Had anyone come from the opposite direction, someone would have had to back up.

We wound around several different roads and came out above Lake Crawely at about 6,000'

Looking out over the landscape away from Lake Crawley.