Beatty is a picturesque, unincorporated town just 7 miles east of Death Valley National Park. It is located along the Amargosa River at an elevation of 3,307 feet. It is surrounded by 3 peaks; Bare Mountain, Sawtooth Mountain and the Bullfrog Hills. I always enjoy the drive across Death Valley from Lone Pine, California, to Beatty.
I always enjoy the summer drive across Death Valley from the Sierras. After backpacking in the high country, it's fun to visit the low country. California is a land of extremes. It's about 95 miles from Mount Whitney the highest mountain in the lower 48 states at 14,505 feet, to Stovepipe Wells at 10 feet above sea level. I begin my drive east at Lone Pine which sits at the base of Mount Whitney in the Owens Valley. Sometimes I drive to Badwater Basin at 282 feet below sea level. However this time I was eager to reach my air conditioned hotel room in Las Vegas so I skipped that drive, and anyway it was hot enough at Stovepipe Wells. I wasn't eager for hotter temperatures since I was heading back to Phoenix.
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| Rainbow Canyon |
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| Devil's Cornfield |
Horton Creek Campground sits at 4,975 feet elevation, and is located on an alluvial fan, next to Horton Creek with an
outstanding view of Mt. Tom at 13,658 feet elevation in the Sierra Nevada
Range. This is a very nice campground with good Verizon 4G cell coverage, unless Verizon is down for 11 hours, which is what happened in Bishop. Then my OCD says to me what if it doesn't come back on? What if something is wrong with my phone? What if I need a new phone? So I end up checking back at the Verizon store for a second time in the late afternoon, and I just get the same answer, "it will probably be back up soon." My phone came back on around 9:00pm, and I hope I learned something about my OCD.
I started my 24 mile hike in the eastern Sierras at Agnew Meadows and followed the Shadow Creek Trail up to Shadow Lake, and then to Ediza Lake. I got here the day before my hike and slept in my car because my OCD said what if I can't find a place to park. On Monday morning the lot wasn't even half full. Hope I learned something about my OCD. I also check and recheck my backpack. I even brought 3 water purification systems, my Katadyn Hiker Filter, my Sawyer Squeeze Water Filter, and Aquatabs water purification tablets. My OCD keeps saying "what if this happens"?
My second day on the trail I hiked 7.9 miles on the John Muir Trail to Garnet Lake, and Thousand Island Lake where I camped for the night.
On my third day on the trail I hiked 9 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail / High Trail back to Agnew Meadows. Every morning I was up at sunrise, and hit the trail at 7:30am.
The Sierra Nevada Range extends 165 miles along the California/Nevada border between Los Angeles and Reno. The Inyo National Forest includes over 2 million acres of pristine lakes, winding streams, rugged peaks and arid Great Basin Mountains. Elevations range from 3,900 to 14,505 feet, providing diverse habitats that support vegetation ranging from semi arid deserts to high alpine meadows.
Convict Lake Campground is about 34 miles north of Bishop, California on Highway 395. The campground sits at an elevation of 7,500 feet among the beautiful eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. On the far side of Convict Lake is Laurel Mountain at 11,818 feet elevation. It is largely composed of metamorphic rock caused by contact with an intruding pluton in the late Cretaceous.
The mountains are medicine for my OCD.
The Inyo Craters are the result of three steam explosions on the summit and south flank of Deer Mountain. Scientists think that the craters formed when rising magma encountered large pockets of groundwater causing explosive vaporization of water to steam. These phreatic explosions created funnel-shaped craters and hurled overlying rock debris to distances of about a mile, but no magma reached the surface. Inyo Craters formed shortly after the eruption of Deadman, Obsidian, and Glass Creek domes sometime between 650 to 500 years ago.
Before my backpacking trip I took a drive up to Mono Lake. Mono Lake covers about 65 square miles. It is an ancient saline lake, over 1 million years old -- one of the oldest lakes in North America. It has no outlet and no fish; instead it is home to trillions of brine shrimp and alkali flies. The most distinctive feature at Mono Lake are its tufa towers. These mineral structures are created when fresh-water springs bubble up through the alkaline waters of the lake.
I was excited to reach the state line on the lonely highway where the wind was blowing hard through the basin and range topography. I was heading up and over three mountain ranges on state route 168 to Big Pine, California. This is route 266.
