The 395 and Owens Valley-Eastern Sierra Region

Inconsiderate assholes go together with Instagram, Facebook and Twitter like peanut butter goes together with jelly.

 

I’m wondering how much longer the trend will last.

 

I think it's getting worse and not any better

 

…it will last as long as they keep selling off-road trucks and crossovers, and showing beautiful models glamping in pristine landscapes!

 

On another note, the Alertwildfire site isn't showing any of the cameras for Owens Valley. I'm hoping it is temporary. Miss seeing the newer locations for webcams that were available.

 

It’s worse because it’s smaller and more defined (at least at AH). I secretly hope the return to office thing helps lower visitation. Plus, couple friends who were into indoor climbing have kinda given up outdoor.

 

The road is open and pretty easily passable IMO. Rocky at the start, but it's my guess that it's always been that way. No washouts. We just happened to have a few hours after a trip a little further south, so we popped in there Sunday morning. What beautiful lakes, but boy, I'm pretty sure I'd only ever end up there mid-week. Though we had it to ourselves, it is clearly highly trafficked.

Fall colors were amazing, but there's only a week of those left, I'd guess. Here are a few lower res, quickly processed, photos.

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Thanks for the trail report @turbodb Bummer about the traffic but that's about what I'd expect I suppose. This is exactly why I'll be going on a Monday rather than a Sunday - although it may not make a huge difference but we'll see. And yeah, that first rocky section looks familiar from when I ran it before so I don't think that's different although I suppose they could be more exposed if some soil had washed away. How long did it take you guys to get up there?

 

Took us an hour (almost exactly) to get up from the highway, with lots of photo stops (because, me). 35 minutes down, with only a few pics.

Ran into 7 Jeeps and a 4Runner - that must have been shareholders in Baja Designs and KC, getting paid by the kWH - airing down, just as we got back to the trailhead. Could have been a cloudy day and we'd still have gotten a tan, hahaha. I did notice that after I finished airing up (about a 22-minute operation for me), they were still on the initial climb - about 1/2-2/3 of the way up.

 

Hey turbodb, Great comment. If you would like to join them feel free to reach out to me directly and I can get an order going for you.
Email:brandonk@bajadesigns.com

 

All in good fun man.

I considered BD for a while, but I happened to get lucky and win a raffle for some DD SS3 Pros, of which I opted for fogs. They were pretty awesome, so I ended up waiting for the SS5 Pros to replace my Hella's. I still like that round look of the LP6 or LP9 (like the Hellas), but I'm really happy with the SS5s and they cut a beam like nobody's business.

But, thing is, when I'm out on the trail at 11am, I don't need *any* of them on. Certainly not 7 KCs strung up as a light bar on the roof and 3 LP6s on the bumper - all pointed at the rear-view mirrors of the guy 20 feet in front of me, or the solo 1st gen Tacoma coming down the trail the opposite direction. Maybe I'm just stuck in the dark ages of camping, rather than transitioning to proper overlanding.

 

Lockers before light bars.

As far as Laurel Lakes being busy. Yeah, it's getting worse each year. That's what made last summers closure so special. It reminded me of the early 2000's. On a normal weekend you can expect at least 10 rigs in the upper lake parking/camping area. Then at least another 10 day tripping it. This time of year it slows down a lot but is still very rare to have the lake to yourself.

 

Sounds like another great place off the Sonora pass that's closed now because of overuse.

 

INYO FS is pretty forgiving when it comes to closing things. I've only seen them close one road that didn't have access via other, more main, roads. I bitched about that one and a year later the road was opened again. All the other closures have been secondary or tertiary roads and they where closed in order to clean up the trail system. No complaints about how they are currently running the roads around here.

 

I don't agree with the road closure to the ashram trail head. It has already been discussed here. Yes it is about one mile of closure but the parking area at the old trail head could accommodate more vehicles instead of having people park in the road which is what happened the last time I was there.

 

I'd agree there's no real reason to close that section other then it get slightly harder. I don't go down that way often so it's not really on my radar. I can understand why they did though. The Stone House is getting so popular I would venture to guess passenger cars tried to drive that section and kept getting stuck, flats, or broken. I will bitch about it next time I swing into the FS office to chat.

 

Thank you in advance. I'm sure you're right about the street cars being in places they shouldn't be.

 

Sounds like that trail needs some additional signage.

 

Making my way south on Highway 395

 

There's some nice bows in those waters. The flow right now is damn near perfect.