Day 5 of July 2024 Trip to Sierra Nevada, Mammoth Area, 1

Fifth day of my July 2024 trip to the Sierra Nevada. Weather forecast indicated chances of rain in the afternoon, so my friend and I stayed close to the town of Mammoth Lakes, checking out views from the top of its ski resort together with a few alpine lakes nearby.

Mountains around Mammoth Lakes

As mentioned in the previous post, we visited Sierra Nevada during a week of anomaly when it came to precipitation, with rain in the forecast both yesterday and this afternoon. Besides Mount Starr, which we climbed the previous day, there were no mountains on our radar with a trail short enough for us to finish by early afternoon, so instead we decided to spend the day without any mountaineering activities. From our overnight hotel in the town of Bishop, the ski resort town of Mammoth Lakes was a 45-minute drive away, which we decided to check out.

Minaret Vista

This was a small vista/parking lot to the west of the town of Mammoth Lakes, offering views to the Minarets to the west. The Minarets were a group of jagged peaks as part of the Ritter Range. They were remains of an ancient lava flow that existed long before the formation of Sierra Nevada mountains.

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Minarets

Mountains from Minaret Vista

Mammoth Mountain
It’s north face looked both steep and uniform.

Mountains to the West
Mount Ritter and Banner Peak are the two prominent peaks in the background.

Mountains to the Northwest
Distant ones into Yosemite National Park.

Mountains from Minaret Vista

Minaret Vista was located next to the entrance station of Devils Postpile National Monument, which would be our natural next stop, if not for the road construction in summer 2024 that shut the park down from Monday to Thursday. So instead, we decided to head onto Mammoth Mountain. The ski resort operated one gondola in the summer to take people up to the summit overlook.

Top of Mammoth Mountain

From the top of the gondola station, it’s a short walk to the scenic overlook with views of various alpine lakes to the south. I also felt that the views of Minarets to the west were better from the top of Mammoth Mountain, compared to earlier at Minaret Vista. The breeze on top of Mammoth Mountain made it a much better experience than the heat I felt at Minaret Vista (the latter was free, though).

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Ritter Range Mountains

Lake Mary and Lake Mamie

Horseshoe Lake and Lake George

Mountains to the South

Bear Creek Spire and Mount Gabb in the background. Bear Creek Spire was the prominent mountain as seen during our hike the previous day to Mount Starr.

Mountains around Mammoth Lakes

Red Cones

View from Mammoth Mountain Summit Vista Point

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Summit of Mammoth Mountain
Gondola station, a small cafe, and lots of bike/ski tracks.

Fields to the East
The town of Mammoth Lakes visible at the foot of the mountain.

Fields to the North

Overlooking North Face of Mammoth Mountain
Taken from the gondola.

It turned out that the ski tracks on Mammoth Mountain were dubbed as mountain bike tracks in the summer. As far as I could tell, that’s the top revenue contributor for the resort in the summer. My friend was very keen on us renting bikes to ride down the mountains (and possibly for me to provide the amusement of crashing off my bike, as I hadn’t ridden a bike for years and had never done so off road). Unfortunately for him, I was determined to stay away from the possibility of injury before we take on some more exciting mountaineering in the coming days and thus resisted his coaxing.

Alpine Lakes near Mammoth Lakes

After getting off Mammoth Mountain, we headed back to the town of Mammoth Lakes for lunch, before heading to the alpine lakes outside the town in the afternoon.
That’s when the mischievous part of my friend started to prompt me to take on activities that were more adventurous, such as renting paddleboards on Lake Mary so that one can do “all sorts of stunts, like jumping into the middle of the lake”. Again, unfortunately for him, the rental shop owner suggested against that as “wind was picking up and storm was gathering”. I didn’t want to lose my glasses by going overboard, which also didn’t help for him.

So instead, we settled on more leisurely activities such as driving around the alpine lakes and appreciating their scenery, among which Crystal Crag was probably the most notable. It was a granite monolith that could be climbed via a YDS class 3 route, that wasn’t too long. Climbing Crystal Crag wasn’t on our plan as we already have another class 3 mountain (Cloudripper via West Chute) planned for this trip.

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Crystal Crag amount Mountains beyond Lake Mamie

Overlooking Twin Lakes

Crystal Crag

Mammoth Crest

Mountains beyond Lake Mary

However, with enough time left in the day, my friend and I fancied a short stroll hike to Crystal Lake. Unfortunately, the weather just wasn’t cooperative. There had been an on-and-off rain after we arrived at the few alpine lakes. In short, whenever we decided to leave the car to hit the trails, the rain started and we had to retreat back to it. And not long after we got back to the car, it stopped. It’s like the weather system could read our minds and work against them.

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Lake George

Crystal Crag

Creek
Flowing from Crystal Lake into Lake George.

House across Lake George
Quite the hermit life.

Twin Falls

Twin Lakes

And with such uncooperative weather, all I could do was to launch my drone for an aerial tour of the lakes, in between periods of rain. Here were some photos from the drone.

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Overlooking Twin Lakes

Overlooking Twin Lakes

Overlooking Twin Lakes

And here’s a video of my drone flying across Twin Lakes. Unfortunately, with some drizzles at the far end of Twin Lakes, I decided that’s it and turned around.

30 seconds, 2160p60fps, 2.5x playback speed, 14Mbps/54MB for H265, 15Mbps/56MB for H264.

Finally, just before 4pm, we decided we had had enough with our cat-and-mouse game with the weather, and started driving back to Bishop and called it a day.
END

Day 5 of July 2024 Trip to Sierra Nevada, Mammoth Area, 1 by Huang's Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.