Ride the High Country Location #1

(GPS: N37 36.675 W119 00.625)

After the crater, the postpile, and the falls, I was starting to lose my enthusiasm. This is the way things sometimes are when I plan things out way beforehand and by the end of the day I just want to go home. So, I had to really "push" myself to do this part, but I knew this would be rewarding.

This is Lake Mamie and the unqiue mountain formation in the background is Crystal Crag.

It has shown up in a lot of old b-westerns. It is the first thing you see in Ride the High Country.
My shot from a different angle.
Just across the street is where they shot a short scene in Ride the High Country. They show you Twin Lakes below.
My picture looking below.
The camera was probably very close to where I was at, but then they look like they moved a little to the right (south) to show Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea coming up the mountain with their horses. When Randolph Scott comes up and you see the lakes again through the trees.
This is looking towards my right (south). More than likely they were over there somewhere then came up to the road. Right after they come up here it looks like they were on Lake Mary Road, but the cameraman shoots it at an angle so you do not see the road or Lake Mamie.

Ride the High Mamie and Twin Lakes (Youtube Version)

Ride the High Mamie and Twin Lakes (Vimeo Version)

Alright, one more of these from Mammoth and I am done with this area.

The Silent Rainbow Falls

(GPS: 37 36.090 W119 05.075)

I think Youtube has the advantage on this one since I had to use a little more compression on Vimeo, but I will post both versions:

The Silent Rainbow Falls #1 (Youtube Version)

The Silent Rainbow Falls #1 (Vimeo Version)

I use some alternative footage and show the falls from the other two observation points:

The Silent Rainbow Falls #2 (Youtube Version)

The Silent Rainbow Falls #2 (Vimeo Version)

A young boy commented in a loud voice on the bus ride back to Mammoth that, "Devils Postpile is overrated. Rainbow Falls is what the area should be really called." I had to laugh at that because I understood what he was trying to say. I think the average person gets more of the "wow" factor from seeing waterfalls.

We continued the last 1/2 mile from the area I showed in the previous blog entry. The San Joaquin River was beside us for most of the hike. Here is where it drops over the falls.

When we got to the first observation point I quickly started videoing the area. I wanted to get a few minutes in, but the problem was everyone started really crowding in at this point. There was not an overwhelming amount of people, but the people that were there quickly crammed into the areas right next to me. I do not think I have ever had that issue in the Sierra before, but as I said in the previous blogs this is a well known tourist area. It would have been nice if they could have given me a minute or two before they tried to take my place.
A few blogs back I mentioned we did not get on the tour bus as early as we should have. I think this is the area I kind of "paid" for it in that the rainbow might have been a bit better an hour earlier. I do not know, but from what I have read you need to be there during the morning hours. We were sometime before noon, so at least I was able to get the above.
There are two other main observation points of the falls. One is a little lower from the first one (which you can see in the second video), but the bottom one is where you go down a long stairway to get to the above picture. You can definately feel the mist down here.

According to what I have read, the falls have actually moved 500 feet back from the original location. This has to do with the erosion due to the water continuously undercutting or sculpting the rock below it over long periods of time.

People were really complaining about going back up the stairway. The way the hike worked out the stairway back up those 100 steps is lot more work that the hike itself. From the falls you just have go back the way you came, but there is a closer trailhead to where the bus takes people out. From there we rode the bus back to Mammoth.

My day was not over with this though. I wanted to be sure to hit two Mammoth movie location areas before we headed home. Those will come up in the next blog.

The Rainbow Fire

(N37 36.405 W119 04.745)

GPS coords are just approximate according to Google Earth since I did not take any readings there on my own.

From Devils Postpile to Rainbow Falls the hike is just a few miles. A few miles can be a lot of work in the Sierra depending on what you have to hike up or through, but going south from Devils Postpile is rather simple. It is mostly flat, and if there are any elevation changes, then you are really just going downhill. So, we were just flying down the trail as quick as we could go. We ended up passing a lot of groups of people (ex. Boy Scout troops, middle aged to elderly on their backpacking vacations, etc.). Since this is a tourist hike we encountered a lot of people that one could tell do not get out very much. In any case, we eventually passed those people and the area opened up a bit.

For a lot of the hike we were just traveling through a forest area with trees on our sides. It did open up a bit. I knew we were heading into Ansel Adams Wilderness. When you think of Ansel Adams you think of beautiful b/w scenic pictures. So, here are we are:
Ugh, oh! Not good. My memory is a bit hazy, but I seem to remember the fire in August, 1992. A lightning strike three miles south caused a fire that did not seem like it would do the damage that it caused. However, the wind picked up a few days later and spread to this area.

At first I did not care for it, but after looking at it for a bit my opinion changed. It does remind me of what could be a possible fantasy movie type of location. While something like this may seem bad at the moment all it takes is time for nature to bring all the trees back. What has happened in the past 18 years is the new habitat has brought forth new types of plants and animals there were not here before. So, the dead wood is being used in someway.

At the end of my last video on Devils Postpile I showed a little of this area. In the video that comes after the next one I added some alternative footage of this area. So, wait for the next blog or two for that one.

We were only about 1/2 mile until Rainbow Falls. The waterfall ended up being the highlight of the day for me. I think you will really like the next two or three blog entries. It is the stuff I really wanted to get to on this day we did in Mammoth.

Devils Postpile

(GPS:N 37 37.510 W 119 05.065)

After visiting the craters we headed to Mammoth. I knew we needed to take a bus to Reds Meadow Valley so we could get to Devils Postpile. After purchasing our tickets we waited. As I remember, we sort of messed up by not notifying the guy who reserves seats on the bus where the bus takes off that we intended to go on the next bus. Which meant we had to wait around another 30 minutes or so. That was not really a bad thing, but looking back on this it slightly messed things up, and I will come back to this in one of the next two blogs.

After the 10-15 minute drive up and then descending, we started the short hike to Devils Postile. I had never been back here before, so I was looking forward to actually seeing this landmark. It is a well known tourist destination, so there were lots of people walking around.

Basically, somewhere between 700,000-100,000 years ago lava flowed over this area. It slowly cooled over the rock. The jointing occurred while the lava contracted. Then a glacier polished the rock. This created the organ pipe look to it and the "postpile" of rocks below it.
Most of the columns are hexagons, but the rest are 7 sided, 5 sided, 4 sided, 3 sided. This picture is standing above the postpile.
From the dozens of pictures I had seen and what I had read over the years, I kind of knew what to expect in coming here. Nothing surprised me too much. I think the only thing was I thought the postpile would be a bit bigger. The area is pretty much isolated to what I show above.

So, I would say we spent about 15 minutes total below and above the postpile. The next thing to do was to head to Rainbow Falls which is an easy hike a few miles to the south. We did encounter something I want to cover in the next blog. You will see a part of it the video I did for Devils Postpile.

Devils Postpile (Youtube Version)

Devils Postpile (Vimeo Version)

Inyo Crater Lake

(GPS: N37 41.610 W119 00.250)

There are a lot of areas I show that I never feel that great about the pictures or the video I take. Usually, it means I have arrived at the area too early in the morning or there are other factors like bad weather involved. I always tell myself that I can just come back some other time, but it may be years before I do that. This is one of those times that I think the area is really cool, but I knew going that it might turn out this way.

This begins a bunch of blogs dedicated to a day I spent in Mammoth, CA last year. Normally, I stay away from Mammoth because it is a little too touristy. I am not saying it is a bad place to go because there is a lot of stuff to explore there. It just usually turns out that it is a little too populated during the times I go. Let's put it this way, it is the only place I drive by that I might encounter traffic and slow down the drive...and I do not drive that fast! ;) I do intend to go back at later time for some things I want to figure out.

In any case, I think some of the best stuff I got to was later in the day. It will take a few blog entries to get to those. I still want to cover this area and the next area I went to on this day.

The Mono-Inyo area is filled with many craters. I have shown a few in the past. This one I had always read about, but had never visited so I wanted to cram this one in as the first thing I visited on that morning last August. After a short drive on the Mammoth Scenic Loop Road, we drove a few interconnected dirt roads, and then hiked about a 1/2 mile to the two craters.

I am only going show a few pictures of the southern crater. The northern one is interesting too. It does have a lake, but there are many trees in the crater. The southern crater is a lot more opened up. There is another crater further north that can be hiked to, but I did not even bother going to that.

From what I have read, this was not a volcanic eruption. Basically, moltan rock heated up some water underneath creating steam. The pressure blew off the top of the crater. The lake is supposed to be shaped like a wine glass in that if you were to go down it would get more skinny. I actually waited around on this one hoping the shadow would go away. I would have to spend a few hours here during the middle of the day to get the pictures I was really after; I know others have done just that on the web so you can search others sites for that. We really had to keep our schedule for the day so we took off back to the car.

Refer to the Inyo Craters Section in this link.

Wikipedia article on the Mono-Inyo Craters

My Video on this one:

Inyo Crater Lake (Youtube Version)

Inyo Crater Lake (Vimeo Version)

Yer A Bunch A Idi0ts!

How is that for a title? Insult my audience. If there is one thing I have learned from something like Youtube is the way to get more people to watch your stuff is to anger them. It is the whole, "there is no negative publicity," thing. The unfortunate part is you get a bunch of people that do not watch your stuff because they like you, but quite the opposite. A mob mentality forms. I am totally not like that, and the last thing I need after a hard day at work is dealing with an angry mob during my "hobby" time.

In light of what today is...check the date...you get the idea...I thought I would offer up a screwball video and a little commentary on a screwball documentary.

You can figure this one out:

Left Turn to Nowhere (Youtube Version)

Left Turn to Nowhere (Vimeo Version)

Okay, a little while back I referred to a tv documentary that I felt almost made a mockery of what I do. It had nothing to do with me, but the coincidences were kind annoying. There was a series on the History Channel called Monster Quest. It deals with legendary animals/creatures and the paranormal from what I can tell. Well, I was told I needed to watch the episodes called, Sierra Sasquatch. At the risk of taking something too seriously that the producers were probably laughing at behind the scenes, here we go...

First, before I turned this on, I was thinking, "why is this on the History Channel?" Maybe Sci-Fi, Discovery, etc., but the History Channel? Of course, I realize there is the issue of putting stuff on to get ratings, but even this was so over the top I thought I better comment here.

This episode might have worked with me had it been somewhere in Canada I have never been, but the fact it was practically my backyard during just about every summer of my life was just too much. The premise of the episode is there have been Bigfoot sightings near the Mono Lake vicinity.

In my experiences, there are lots of animals that have watched me during my hikes, but I really seriously doubt a bunch of Bigfoot are out there. This particular area is remote, but not THAT REMOTE from people crossing by. I think I would have been more impressed with a documentary on wolverine's in the Sierra because they are out there, but are very rare to see.

They had a guy who was training at the marine base in 1985 that supposedly saw some while doing a training mission, they had a glider plane fly over Mono Lake and the June Lake area with radar, a hunter who allegedly encounter some a few years back, and one of the lead investigators supposedly saw one cross the road out near the June Lake area. Then the had 11-13 foot tracks at what looked like Grant Lake. Yeah, my shoe size range. The main thing they showed was video footage taken in the early 1990's at the western tufa site of Mono Lake.

We are told the video footage was done by a father with his family and was not seen until 17 years after while going through the video. Of course, the father was shown as a shadow since he feared for his families privacy. Yeah...right. ;) This is what showed up:

You can clearly see something moving by.
Is it a man with a parka or bigfoot? They went to the site above these days, and it is under water where the "creature" would have been standing. Take whatever you want from this, but these days video footage is very easy to manipulate. Inserting something like the above would not seem to difficult.

Here is what was sort of funny about this episode. They did it during the time I was there for a weekend in October. I hiked in both Lundy Canyon and near June Lake and both were the main featured areas in this documentary. I will blog about these in the future, but the funny thing is I seemed to remember driving by a bunch of people when I left Lundy Canyon that could have been a film crew. I might have walked right by some of these guys out there and not even known it. Check this out, this guy was out there looking for tracks:

I saw that plume of smoke in the background. I knew I was there the few hours that thing was up. This is right after we got done hiking in Lundy Canyon. It was a bizarre thing to see so I said we had to stop and take pictures.
A close up. That was there only on this day.
So, it was downright creepy they filmed in exactly the two main areas I hiked that weekend. I told my brother we need to stop hiking these areas because some idiots think were Bigfoot/Sasquatch. ;)

There is a sucker born every minute. Don't believe everything you see on tv. Alright, enough for the screwy fools day. More serious stuff next time.

The Norman Clyde Exhibit (2 of 2)

Continuing from the last blog...

"The pack that walks like a man." Norman carried a very big backpack.

This is one of his pictures of that he took of one of his mountain climbing partners.

Norman was always first choice for search and rescue back then. His search and find of Pete Starr's body in 1933 is sad, but legendary at the same time. This picture refers to a crash site he was asked to find.

Finally, I thought this summit registry that the Sierra Club put on Mt. Langley was nice to see since I was on top of Langley a few years ago and all they had was an ammo can. If you double click the picture you can read a little of the history about the registries.

As I wrap this one up I thought I would mention how Norman Clyde was fired from the Sierra Club. I get the idea that Norman was a guy that expected to have competent people on his climbs and only put up with so much with what he perceived as idiots. He was leading a group to a certain peak and one of the clumsy hikers with them fell and broke his pelvis and also had a severe gash on his head. Apparently, this could have been avoided by setting up a rope over the passage. A stretcher was brought in for the injured man, but when Norman and the others came back to camp they decided to fire him from the club. What mountain was that trip done on?

Why, my logo picture at the top of the blog!

My video of the exhibit:

Norman Clyde Exhibit (Youtube Version)

Norman Clyde Exhibit (Vimeo Version)

For more on his life:

Norman Clyde Wikipedia

Norman Clyde: Legendary Mountaineer of California's Sierra Nevada by Robert Pavlic

Close Ups of the High Sierra by Norman Clyde

The Norman Clyde Exhibit (1 of 2)

The Eastern California Museum in Independence, CA had an exhibit dedicated to the life of Norman Clyde last year. On my way home I decided to stop by and check it out. I had been there a few years ago when they had an exhibit on the Russian Gulog. This was something that did interest me since Norman Clyde is famous for his 1st ascents on many Sierra mountains.

Prior to my going, I did know some about his life through a few books he had written about his climbs, a few articles written about him, and a recent biography written about him. This exhibit showed a lot of pictures taken of him, pictures he had taken, and some of his "artifacts" he used.

The following board shows some about his wife and their marriage license. If my memory serves, she was a nurse who ended up getting t.b. herself and died a few years after her marriage. This event is what made Norman Clyde move to the Eastern Sierra in order to become a principal at the high school there.

This pictures shows a few of his possessions. While mountain geer is expected, the books are interesting to me in that he was really into the classics. Apparently, while not out climbing would spend a lot of time reading the ancients.

This slab of wood I found interesting. On the first climb up Whitney's East Face, Norman and his hiking friends found this piece of wood. It says, "William Knutson Sept 4 91(?) Tiptop." One wonders if they were truly the first ones to ascend on that route, but in any case I think it is cool find for 1931. You may want to double click this picture:

Here is a gun he owned. The story is that a bunch of local teenagers tried to pull a prank on Halloween night at the high school. Norman was at the school and pulled his gun. After shooting a some shots in the air this incident led to his resigning (or fired) as principal. From what I have read, he was not really a guy who was living up to the communities expectations as an educator because he was always taking off on weekends to do his climbs rather than go to the local community functions. So, this was another incident that forced him to isolate and focus more on climbing.

His hat. He had that kind of Indiana Jones thing going for him.

I will continue this in the next blog. I tried to do a video of this exhibit. Although you cannot really tell from what I used as video, there were people around. So, I had to kind of move quickly at some points to avoid being annoying to others trying to look at the pictures and artifacts. If you do see something you want to look at or try to read some of the panels then I really suggest you pause the video.

Norman Clyde Exhibit (Youtube Version)

Norman Clyde Exhibit (Vimeo Version)

Back in Business!

Okay, lots of stuff to mention here, so let's get going.

First, today is the anniversary of the death of Morgan Earp. I decided it was time to upload a new version of the gravesite location. I went back and made a few changes to the old blog as well:

RIP Morgan Earp (Youtube Version)

RIP Morgan Earp (Vimeo Version)

Rest in Peace Morgan Earp Blog

Second, I uploaded a bunch of new videos and blogs in the past few days. This is to catch up with everything that should have been up during the past month. Long story short, my internet provider had to send out a tech guy three separate times due to a low signal on my connection. I was able to use my connection during the morning for a few hours, but by late afternoon it was really bad. Everything is fine now so I should be able to be more consistent and have something up almost once every week or two for a while.

Three, I was reminded of a comment I made to Alex in one of the last blogs I did about mountain climbing recently. I did some really cool local hikes over the past two weeks that I will probably talk about in a few months time. They have a different type of danger to them than the mountain climbs, but the last one I did, after all the danger was over, I ended up kicking a rock and falling over on flat ground. Luckly, I did not fall on my camera's as bad as I thought I did. My gps and walking stick went flying, but no major damage. Lol! The hikes were really cool because, even though they are near the city, they are really remote due to lack of trails. It was more of a bushwack "jungle" adventure for me. I think you will like them when I eventually get to them because the final reward on each of them is really cool.

Fourth, my brother called last night and told me to turn on the television. Oh boy! I saw one of the worst documentaries last night on t.v. It almost makes a mockery of everything I try to do on here. No, it really had nothing to do with me, but it really felt like it since I was very nearby while they were filming it. I recorded the thing and will rip it to shreds on here at the beginning of next month.

Alright, I think that covers about everything I wanted to say. I be going through the recent blogs this weekend and making any changes that are needed. If any of the links are not working, then I will take care of them at that time.

Fort Apache Part 2 (Corriganville Series)

In the last blog there was a tree in the way that I pointed out. You can see part of that on the left in this next picture. The reason I am showing this picture is to show the maintenance road on the right.
You can see Shirley Temple looking at the people driving horses back and forth. That maintenance road is in the background. The picture above is not the same area as the one below.
From what I can tell, this is closer to the perspective of the camera taking the shot above. The tree throws it off a bit because you can not see the maintenance road very well. That sign shows you that these set houses were on this side.
There is a scene at the beginning that John Wayne rides to this house Shirley Temple was at.
The mounds, the overgrowth, but I think this is close enough. I should have circled the rocks I am keying on in these pictures, but I think you can figure it out. In the above picture it is the set of rocks next to the bush next to the chimney. In my picture look to the upper middle right side.
You can see why I consider this area a bit frustrating. I am close in all of these, but not as close as I would like to be due to all the changes over the years. Fires pretty much destroyed all the structures at Corriganville decades ago, but this gives you an idea of where things once were here.

I always thought filming at an area like this was ancient history. My surprise was that I saw it used in a tv show recently. I mentioned my shock of seeing it in this blog I did a while back. If I do go back soon I want to figure out the details of what they did in that Bones episode.

Fort Apache Location (Youtube Version)

Fort Apache Location (Vimeo Version)

Fort Apache Part 1 (Corriganville Series)

(GPS: N34 15.980 w118 39.295)

I will post the video below. As I mention in it, this one was a long time in coming. I should have had this one up years ago. The problem was I always arrived too early in the morning with bad lighting, or poor weather conditions with too much wind. I am sort of satisified at the moment with what I have, but if I feel differently someday I will go back. I am thinking of going back eventually for another reason which I will mention again at the end of the next blog.

Any movie or tv show that needed a fort to be shown would more than likely use this place. I have seen Fort Apache used in tons of old stuff. Here is a picture used in Fort Apache when the new troops march in front of John Wayne and Henry Fonda:

I showed this picture once before. The angle is quite right, but I usually take a picture here because the plaque they have is right here. Of course, the set is long gone and the area is not so flat anymore. There is a huge mound out in the middle.

There is another scene where the new troops are in training.
I moved out to where the dirt road is in the above picture. Then I turned around. This picture is close. Some of the rocks in the background were key; I point those out in the video. Notice the tree. lol! Yeah, those rocks were helpful too and that is what you are seeing on the right side in the above picture, but the tree kind of messes thing up a bit.
At the very end of the movie you the troops all prepare for what will be the big battle scene.
The flag pole above marks the right side of my picture. You should be able to line of some of the rocks in the background.
I will continue this one in the next blog. You can check out the video I made for it in the meantime:

Fort Apache Location (Youtube Version)

Fort Apache Location (Vimeo Version)

Saddlehorn Rock Location (Iverson Ranch Series)

Here is a quick one. Clayton Moore in, Adventures of Frank and Jesse James, is given a landmark to look for. The rock formation known as Saddlehorn Rock.
Here it is.
The video will help you realize where it is if you have seen my other recent Iverson Ranch video.

Saddlehorn Rock Location (Youtube Version)

Saddlehorn Rock Location (Vimeo Version)

Summit Lake (Epilogue)

Time to wrap this one up. Going up and coming down mountains have different issues you have to deal with. Coming down is not always easy. At one point I slipped and slammed my right hand into a rock making my hand a mess. I had blood all over my hand and all over the rocks up there. I guess you could say I left my mark there. Meanwhile, I was trying to make sure my camera and video camera would not get blood on them. Then, almost back to the the pass, I fell and pushed out my right leg in such a way I was concerned I might have hyper-extended it. I got up quickly with no issues after this. I knew all the major work was over so I just decided to head to Summit Lake.
It is a nice small lake.

I continued a little further and could see the next lake in the distance. It was at this point I decided I had seen all I wanted to and it was time to turn around.

The funny thing that happened around this time is after not seeing any sign of life the whole day a dog trotted past me at 12,000 ft. I think I was more thrilled to see him that he was of me since he just kept trotting past me without sniffing me. His owner then past by about a minute later.

Not much more worth mentioning happened on the way down. It was on the way down that tons of people were on the trail. When I got back down to almost the end it really got slow with a line of about 15-20 people stuck behind each other. It took forever to get out of there. I then took the one lane road out as quickly as possible.

The next few days I suffered from the after affects of something. I am not sure if it was dehydration or heat stroke related, but I would feel okay until I was exposed to the sun. I would suddenly feel like the sun was sucking the energy out of me. I would feel okay with the shady trees around, but out in the open I was miserable. For about a week there weren't any clouds out at all, then we had the one day it rained (the Tioga Pass video I showed), then a few days later the Yosemite fire went up. I ended up feeling better by about the time we had that one day of rain.

I have been kind of reminded of that period after the climb recently since I am still recovering from the sickness I had over the past few weeks. I have been really lethargic and have just wanted to rest a lot which I can't afford to do too much of.

Summit Lake (Youtube Version)

Summit Lake (Vimeo Version)

Mt. Starr (Views Where I Ended)

(GPS: N37 25.615 W118 45.970)

Here is how it looked toward the west. The high point on the right is Bear Creek Spire and is the one you usually see when people take pictures of Rock Creek Canyon from below.

Mt. Morgan when I started panning to the south.
This is looking more to the east. You will notice I was not at the highest point.
Panning around more...
and more to the north.
Finally, seeing over the ridge I was looking up at from Mono Pass below.

Why didn't I get to the actual summit? Part of the deal was that when I had read up on this particular mountain hike I knew there were two summits. Some dispute which one is higher than the other, but also say that is hard to tell when you are there. I knew that would be an issue when I got up there. Back to that third picture I show above, I did get around that huge rock, but it became obvious that I was going to have to descend some and then come back up to reach the highpoint in the distance. I was already content with what I had done and started to lose the motivation to keep doing it. I was happy with the views I had, and my main concern was to make sure I had enough energy to descend back down to the pass.

At the time I did this hike, it was the first one I did when I got to the Eastern Sierra in August. I did it because I wanted to explore the area, but mainly to make sure I was in climbing shape. I had been thinking that this was going to be one mountain climb of as many as four more I intended to do while I was there. Then, about a week or so later, the Yosemite fire reared its ugly smoke which messed up the other climbs.

This ended up being my last mountain climb last year. I did get in a few other cross country type of hikes, but this was my last high point. Looking back, had I any idea what the fire was going to do, I probably would have pushed myself to explore more of the ridgeline of Mt. Starr.

This ends the mountain climb part. When I get to my next blog entry I will talk about a few issues about my descent and then show the nearby Summit Lake.

The Climb Up Mt. Starr (Youtube Version)

The Climb Up Mt. Starr (Vimeo Version)