White Mountains and Alabama Hills
We left Mammoth Lakes in the morning of October 5, 2021, and drove south about 45 miles to Bishop. We stopped at the Inyo National Forest HQ to ask questions about the White Mountains (smoke, road conditions and so on). Our phone app said the air was clear up there. We didn’t originally plan to go there today, but conditions change, and if it was clear, we wanted to go now. We spoke with a very chatty ranger who showed us another website about the air, and the conclusion was, no guarantees, but it was probably a good day to visit the bristlecone forest.
So off we went, driving south to Big Pine and then east up into the White Mountains to see the ancient bristlecone forest. Amazingly, the air up in the mountains was very clean and it was the first time we’d seen blue sky in 3 days. In the Owens Valley, the air was still very smoky. We climbed from 4,000 foot elevation at Lone Pine, to 10,000 feet. It took about an hour.
Our first stop was at the Grandview Vista Point. You can see the smoke down in the valley.
Next, we went to the Visitor Center at Schulman Grove. As was typical during COVID, the inside was closed to visitors. But the parking lot was full with some kind of a classic Jaguar (car) club.
We took a mile long loop walk through the forest and then had a picnic lunch. We didn’t attempt the much longer walk to the Methuselah (oldest tree) due to the elevation. The trees were bigger than we expected and looked quite healthy. At this elevation, the sky was a vibrant blue.
From there, we continued on a dirt road for 13 miles, further up into the mountains. The road has one small stretch that is paved for about a half mile, and got pretty rough for the last mile or so. We got a nice view of White Mountain Peak in the distance along the way. At pretty much the end of the road we got to Patriarch Grove (11,300 feet). Note, the road does go a bit farther to two research stations run by the University of California, UCLA.
When we got out of the car, we observed the soil was whiter from the rocks than lower down the mountains. We took a short loop walk through even bigger bristlecone trees than at Schulman. There we saw the Patriarch tree, the world’s largest bristlecone (by volume, it isn’t the tallest).
This is the Patriarch Tree, the largest.
Then we retraced our route down to Bishop, where we spent two nights at a lodge along a creek. With just under 4,000 people, Bishop is the largest town in Inyo County, and its only incorporated one. Including the surrounding towns and the Paiute Indian reservation, the general area has a total population of 14,500 and provides most of the commerce in the Owens Valley. Inyo County has the distinction of being the location of the highest (Mt. Whitney) and lowest (Badwater) places in the continental US, although the smoke made views of Whitney impossible while we were there.
October 6, 2021
The air was still bad in the northern part of the Owens Valley, so we headed south on US 395 where the AQI looked a bit better. We drove about an hour to the town of Lone Pine and then to the nearby Alabama Hills Recreation and National Scenic Area.
The visibility wasn’t great like up in the White Mountains, but the AQI was safe enough to take a few walks. The area is famous for being the location of filming for many western movies and TV shows from the 1920’s to the 1960’s, although there have been a few sci-fi movies that were filmed there more recently. There are maps that give the locations for some of the most famous. The Recreation Area has a one paved road and even more dirt and 4x4 tracks to explore the rock formations.
We drove first to the Mobius Arch viewpoint and took a walk on a loop trail where we saw the arch and two small rock windows. Many of our fellow tourists ignored the signs not to climb the arch or leave the trail. Made it hard to get a photo.
Stupid tourists will climb anywhere.
Mobius Arch.
We went back to the town of Lone Pine for lunch. After that we visited the Museum of Western Film History, which had nice displays of the movies made in the area and a short video showing some of the movies made here.
Afterwards, we drove back up to the Alabama Hills and walked to another arch, Eye of the Alabama. We also actually happened upon a person riding a horse, just like the movies! We then took some dirt roads (Movie Road and Moffat Ranch Road) past more movie sites (Iron Man, Man of Steel), which took us back to US 395.
Eye of the Alabama
From there, we passed the Inyo County Courthouse in Independence as we returned to Bishop for our final night.
