"The Mammoth Mountain Hike"

(N37° 37.830 W119° 01.955)

This is one that I had some curiosity about, but was never too serious about doing. Driving by on the 395 by Mammoth and seeing the mountain is not too impressive compared to the other ones around. It was a low priority on my list of things I wanted to do. This time we had some relatives with us so we decided to do it.

Looking toward the west, one can see the jagged Minarets to the left, Mt. Ritter, and Mt. Banner to the right.

Pulling back a little on this one you can see the clouds made things a little more powerful than it would have been. For that I was grateful. This is looking more toward the south. While it may not seem that impressive, it was interesting to look down this way. The reason being a year earlier I was looking up to here from down there. Somewhere down there is Rainbow Falls and the trail we took after visiting Devils Postpile. This is looking more to the south east. There are lots of cool things one might see in these clouds, but as Charlie Brown might say, "Well...I was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsie, but I changed my mind."This is looking toward the east. This looking more to the east. You can see the Mammoth Gondola in action here. Finally, looking toward the north. You might barely be able to see Mono Lake in the background which we went to afterwords as I mentioned in February. In any case, this was not really much of a hike. We walked from the parking lot to purchase tickets for the gondola. Then in about eight minutes or so we were at the summit. There is a little extra climbing to get to the official summit.

The views are good and if you are not much of a hiker, then you might want to take the gondola to the top. You can also order a sandwich at the top and eat it up there too. It was a touristy one time thing for me that I probably will not do again.

I did put together a video on this one. Originally, I was going to split it up, but decided to include the gondola ride and the views from the summit in the same video. So, it is a little longer than I normally would do. Since this is not one I took too seriously I threw on some of the latest incompetech.com music which Kevin Macleod considers influenced by the 1990's "corporate music plague."

While I do not consider it a complete throwaway video because there are some interesting parts to it, but of all the days of the year to put this up I guess April 1st fits the most:

"The Mammoth Mountain Hike" (Youtube Version)

"The Mammoth Mountain Hike" (Vimeo Version)

Until next time...