A mountain eye candy post.
Rock Creek Lake is in NW Inyo County, WNW of Bishop, at about 2970m (9750ft). There are both cabins and campgrounds nearby. What a fantastic place to stay for a little High Sierra hiking. Megan and I spent seven nights at one of the cabins. She had been here before. It was my first time.
The drive from SoCal took about eight hours with our longest stop at the Eastern California Museum in Independence where we learned about Norman Clyde and saw a set of homemade dentures made from coyote teeth. They also have a good collection of Native American baskets. There’s no store up at Rock Creek so we bought a week’s worth of groceries in Bishop.
The rest of this post is really just photos of High Sierra lakes in August. Here’s Megan walking by Rock Creek Lake at the start of our first hike to Tamarack and Buck lakes on the other side of the ridge.
Being Sunday we wanted to chose a less popular hike. At seven hours it ended up being one of our two longest days, and of course we were unacclimatized.
The biggest draw (for day-trippers) at Rock Creek is the (five-hour) Gem Lakes hike. The trailhead’s about two miles south of the cabins so we used the car both days we started at that trailhead. You want to start early as the parking fills up. Arriving about 8am on weekdays in August worked for us.
Going to Gem Lakes is literally one lake after another: Heart Lake, Box Lake, Long Lake, Hidden Lakes.
Hidden Lakes must really be hidden ’cause I don’t have a photo.
Gem Lakes is a collection of about six lakes. Who can say which is the best?
On the way back we made a short detour for lunch at Chickenfoot Lake. We watched at least two pika run back and forth collecting material for their nest. One stem with flowers was so big and unruly that the pika had to stop, backup, and manipulate the load to continue moving it through the rocks. Amazing. We also saw squirrels, birds, and a pine marten (?).
Chip showed up that afternoon, and we had our only summit hike the next day — Mount Starr. This was our second seven-hour day. Now we can get a bird’s eye of some of these lakes.
On the way back we made a short detour to Ruby Lake — “beautiful High Sierra lake” according to my notes. My notes say pretty much the same thing every day!
On day four the three of us had a long drive (an hour) to have an even longer lunch with friends at Silver Lake. In the morning we stretched our legs on the 3.5 hour walk up to Yost Lake, just west of June Lake Ski Area in the Owens River Headwaters Wilderness. Yost Lake at 2780m is lower than our starting elevation at Rock Creek — no longer High Sierra, I suppose, but still nice.
On my rest day I got out for a 40-minute stroll around Rock Creek Lake.
For our last day we walked directly from the cabin to Hilton Creek Lakes, another collection of (seven?) lakes like Gem Lakes. More beautiful country.
I can see why Megan wanted to return to Rock Creek.