The 395 and Owens Valley-Eastern Sierra Region

One of my favorites. Easy trail and great view 9K feet.

 

Nope it's not a painting. This is in the town of Bridgeport and it's someone's yard!

 

Did a week in Mammoth with @pseudonym

 

Reward Mine - the hardest part was thinking about it the night before!

 

Red Rock Canyon

 

Last one: petroglyphs

 

Howdy from Alabama Hills!

 

Whelp... Mt Patterson eludes me again, I lost another tire on a very rough back trail up to Bodie. Probably will stick to pavement or gravel until I can replace my tire Monday.



Nice view of mono for the tire change though.

 

Sidewall? It's hard to tell on the photo.

 

Well look where I'm camping tonight instead of windswept Mt Patterson...


Small world I guess.

Yes, it's beyond even emergency repair. I did just get a set of large patches, the kind you dismount the tire and apply from inside, after reading about the tragedy at DV earlier this year, which began with two flat tires. But I think I drove on this one for a while after it was flat. Didn't even notice till I stopped for a photo break. Sigh.

The road was really bad and doesn't seem used. But there are no closures at either end, nor anything to suggest such online when planning the route. That made me all the more curious to find out myself.

 

Rad man. It's good to here that not everyone needs a point by point .gpx file to go out and have fun. There's a lot of lesser traveled roads around here. I've been on a lot of them. As long as there's not a FS sign or barricade it's legal. It can also be a little sketchy since your going into the unknown. For me, that's where the real fun starts. Even if it means pinstripes and flats.

 

Very nice. I'm hoping to be there in a couple / three weeks. And hopefully Patterson as well.

 

Not everything unmarked is legal.

Gaia has overlays of MVUM maps and even those can be wrong. Bottom line is if you’re on a closed trail, “not marked” isn’t an excuse.

 

Really? Because I talk to the INYO NF staff all the time. According to them, not me, it's an open trail unless it is barricaded or sign posted. So, around here, not marked isn't an excuse. It's an open trail. lol

 

Yeah. That’s how it’s been described to me.

 

INYO NF is really good about blocking and signing closed trails. Most of the locals are also good about not removing or violating those closures. The FS here is also really good about getting proper public comment. In years they've only closed one trail that I had an issue with. It's an out and back with no spurs to access the area. Other then that, everything else I've seen them close has been for the better of the trail system here.

 

I can’t really comment because it would come across as too political. Short answer is I wish the trails were marked.

 

Shoot me a PM if you want to explain it. I'm always down to have a good convo about land use issues.

 

Drove all the settlements and mines on Mt Patterson on Quads, loved it, can't t wait to do it in the taco) And bring a chain saw, some tree huggers love to fell trees over roads.

 

Interesting comments folks!

I tried really hard from home to figure out if this particular road was open, and I'm a pretty resourceful person, but I stopped short of calling the BLM office. I guess in hindsight I should have. If they told me no, of course I wouldn't have tried, but even a yes would have made it easier to turn back. But instead it became sort of a mission, to figure it out on my own. I was looking for anything--a gate, a sign, a washout, a rockslide, or the slightest hint of an intentional barrier (even if bypassed)--I would have turned around in a heartbeat. But instead I found an aging trail, clearly once a well-engineered mining road for its time, that grew rougher and more overgrown mile by mile... but never presenting a clear impetus to turn back. Like the fable of the boiling frog I guess.

In any case the road appeared open, with only a "no atvs" sign at the turnoff, and I noted numerous recent tire tracks. But the tracks became fewer and less pronounced as the trail narrowed, and soon we were hammered by monsoon thundershowers that washed away any hint of tire tracks, ours included, and shortly thereafter I had also destroyed a tire, so I was so demoralized that I expected to find a locked gate at the end, if not a park ranger waiting for me with handcuffs for being such an idiot. But again, no signs of closure were seen looking back as we descended from the summit, and we still made it to Bodie before the park closed. In fact, its terminus had clearly just been repaired, with modern earthmoving equipment still parked at the final turnoff.

In any case it was way too narrow for a Tacoma, slow as hell, popped my tire, and was not that interesting. In my state of mental defeat I didn't even bother checking out the massive mine works at the back side of Bodie. My recommendation to others: skip this trail.

But I just had to know if I could get through. And I did get through! But I trashed the next few days of carefully planned vacation in the process! And my third E-range KO2 of 2021. Maybe I should try getting better at driving...


Now on to a more recent update: an hour ago, six carloads of high-schoolers rolled up here and made their way into the mine, shouting and laughing like, well, like we all did as teenagers on Saturday night adventures. Apparently, this mine is cursed on Saturdays, and they were here to get properly cursed.

I was concerned they'd be camping here all night, with all that noise and drama, but they rolled out after shining their flashlights around and intermittently shrieking for half an hour.

As the last car left, for unknown reasons lagging the others by several minutes, I heard the distinct sound of a punctured tire, followed by the rythmic flopping of a flat tire. Well, I guess they didn't hear theirs either, because they kept driving! It looks like they've now stopped a several miles down the road, and I'm debating driving down to help, but on the other hand I'm tired and browsing TW. Hoping they can figure it out.

Update: while I was writing all this, they must have figured it out because they eventually set off their car alarm, laughed uncontrollably for a while, then drove off. Amazing how far sound carries in cold still air.

Hoping the clouds open up. Oh, and that the mine isn't cursed!

Update 2: the heavens might reveal themselves yet...



Update 3: well the clouds cleared, but not before the stupid moon came out to bleach the skies. Screw it, I pulled out some LEDs to have fun anyway.



Sorry folks these are jpegs straight from the camera. They'll clean up hopefully...