Memorial Day long weekend. Jess and I plan a trip to go out to the east side of the Sierras. We're planning on leaving saturday morning, drive out there saturday early, have a bit of a sightsee around Mammoth township and so on that afternoon, then spend sunday and monday doing an in'n'out overnight walk. I'd picked out a couple of walks from the net, and from looking at maps, and rang up the rangers to ask about conditions. She immediately ruled out a couple of them for us; The access roads would still be closed from winter. We finally settled on McGee Creek Canyon. This is a canyon about 15-20 minutes south of Mammoth Lakes just off US395. It looked like a lovely walk up a valley, then up to some alpine lakes we were planning on camping at, then back out the next day. Boy were we in for a surprise. But enough of plans.

Day 1: The drive. We headed out along the 580, past the hellholes that is the central valley. Outlet shopping anyone? I can't believe people commute from here to the bay area to work. *shudders* Stop off beside the highway to pick up some cheese and strawbs and cherries and stuff from one of the stalls, makes the drive a lot more pleasant. Eventually get onto Yosemite and onto 120 across Tuolumne. Never been here before. Apparently the road opened that morning. It shows. There's still 3 foot high snow banks freshly plowed on the side of the road. Beautiful day though, crisp, clear. Beautiful. Tuolumne is a wonderful place.

We head on through yosemite, and down through tioga pass (where people were skiing) and then down the weird side of the sierras to Mammoth township. The Sierra's look quite odd from the East side, they rise up quite abruptly from the plains. Mammoth township is pleasant, kinda like all of the tahoe towns squished into one. We have a late lunch/afternoon tea at a very pleasant cafe whose name escapes me (the dangers of waiting so long to write up the stories) It was tucked in behind one of those pretentious outdoor gear shops, patagonia or the like, and served us our first taste of the incredibly fine, Mammoth Brewing Co's Amber. Delicious, beautiful colour, texture, taste. Quite scrumptious. You should have seen Jess's eyes light up. Raving about beer, enough to drive my mother mad I presume. One of the cool things about mammoth is that it appears that you ski through the village in winter. There was at least one place where the road went under a ski run. Pity it's so hard to get to from the bay area in winter, it really does look wonderful.

We left mammoth township and headed off to set up camp, hoping to get in a swim at the hot springs that evening. We pulled into McGee Creek Canyon and the trail head, expecting to find it deserted. Apparently not. The campgroud was absolutely full, very windy, and cost something like $15/night. We were sent off down the road to "some other campgrounds" which proved much nicer. No running water, pit toilets, a little less windy, plenty of spots to choose from, and free. Thankyou BLM. (Bureau of Land Management) Set up the tent, and off to "Hot Creek" which was half the reason we had chosen McGee Creek Canyon in the first place, as it had all these hotsprings dotted all over the map, and the delightfully named "Hot Creek" labelled as well. A worthy destination for an afternoon. Heaps of people, nice toilets, plenty of parking, a local sherrif, and few signs saying, "You really shouldn't swim here" and about 30-40 people in the water. The creek cuts a little gorge across the plains, about 10-20m deep, with various sections steaming and smoking and obviously stupidly hot. Some of these are taped off/fenced off. The pool were were all sitting in is a side eddy in the middle of the creek. You have to wade out through unexpectedly cold water, then get out to where the warm/hot water wells up out of the creek bed. The water roils and is swolen up in a slight bulge. Very impressive. You can hear the ground rumble under you and then a hotter than normal burst of water comes up. The locals say in winter the place to be is further out on the plains, where there are smaller more private hotholes. All with inherant risks of course. A bit bigger rumble than normal and you could up nicely cooked. :)

On to day two.... Note: Topozone has a really nice map of the general area in which we were hiking. The map in the link is centered on Mt Morrison, just to the right and below is McGee Creek Canyon, with the track marked even :)

2002-r7-01.jpg Jess stretching after getting out of the car at Olmstead Pt.	2002-r7-02.jpg Cloud's Rest and area from Olmstead Pt.	2002-r7-03.jpg
2002-r7-04.jpg Tenaya lake from Olmstead Pt.	2002-r7-05.jpg Cloud's Rest, Half Dome from Olmstead Pt.	2002-r7-06.jpg The road down east out of Tioga Pass
2002-r7-07.jpg Our Campsite, feat. Jess and Lake Crowley in the background	2002-r7-08.jpg View from our campsite in the morning, looking up into the hills.	2002-r7-09.jpg Funky rocks just up into McGee Creek Canyon.