From the Sea to the Sierras

The new rig!

View from Prospect Peak

It's 6:30 am on Tuesday September 29th. The sun is rising lighting up the eastern slopes of the Sierras in the high mountain desert. Only eight miles south of Mono Lake, a 65 square mile shallow saline soda lake, and forty-five miles east of Yosemite Valley, the Pod and the new truck are nestled under the Ponderosa Pines overlooking June Lake. Only last Tuesday we were riding along the Pacific Ocean with the Pod and Bruce the van. It's been a week of changes.
Logistically the biggest change was swapping the van for a truck. Any misgivings we had on that score were quickly erased last Thursday when we packed up and drove east along steep, narrow, curving roads up 5000 ft into the Trinity Alps. Bruce just wouldn't have made the trip and survived. Hopefully Bruce will find a happy, less demanding home on the California coast. Long may you run!

The truck (and that is spoken in a very deep voice since it's a manly truck) is more than up to pulling the pod, is easy enough to drive and being diesel is getting great mileage.  An added advantage is in the west and mid west diesel is less expensive than gas.  The truck easily ascends the passes and the brakes don't smell on the descents. Only two and a half hours and 2000ft after leaving the coast we were in Redding, California, the high desert. We made a quick stop at the bank, post office, grocery store and in another hour, another foot of thousand feet in altitude (the park campground was at 6,000 feet), we were setting up camp, back in Lassen Volcanic National Park, back in the land of Ponderosa Pine forests and volcanoes.

Saturday we hiked up to Prospect Peak, the capstone hike of any visit to Lassen. From the summit at the North of the park, Mt. Lassen, Choas Craigs, the mud flow, Warner Valley, the Fantastic Lava Beds, the Painted Hills and the Cinder Cone are all visible...and amazing. The view of the Cinder Cone was especially so since Prospect Peak is right next door and looks down into the cone.

Sunday was moving day again. We drove East to Susanville, CA and then south on 395, skirting the Northern Sierras and driving through Reno and Carson City, NV. Back into eastern California and into a totally different world. Our current campsite's elevation of 7000ft, but that's low compared to the 11,000 plus peaks towering above it to the west. The air is dry, the climate technically desert. Where trees do grow, they're Ponderosa and Jeffrey's Pines and in the canyons, Aspen. Sand, sagebrush and rabbit brush cover the ground. The two most prominent features of the area are the Sierra Nevada range, which we'll be hiking and exploring soon, and Mono Lake which we explored yesterday.

Mono Lake is not your usual lake. First of all it's an inland lake. Water drains in, doesn't flow out. Secondly it's salty, and alkaline. Fish don't live here, only brine shrimp (remember sea monkey's - those are really brine shrimp) and a special kind of fly. Lots of them. To eat all the brine shrimp and flies, there are birds. Lots of those too. In addition to all that there are tufta's. Tall pillars of calcium carbonate that form where fresh water springs bubble up in the alkaline lake waters. Where the lake has receded, the tuftas rise out of the plain looking very other-wordly.

The sun is up now. The dry wind is howling through the campsite and up the canyon. Later today it'll reverse and start howling down until sunset. As the sky turns pink and red, the wind will cease, the pines will be quiet again. But for now the Stellar Jay is still scolding me for not feeding him, and there are canyons to hike!

Mono Lake