Vacation Pics

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A view towards Gaylor Peak from Ellery Lake

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Ellery Lake

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Had to get the sign in too

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Some more Ellery Lake

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A couple of waterfalls on the side of Tioga Pass Road.

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A canyon on the side of Tioga Pass Road.

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My best guess is this is Lee Vining Peak

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Seeing the glaciers flow like water is cool

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Mono Lake. This is filled with calcium deposits called tufa that look really cool, but I didn't have time to stop this trip. Note the water level is low from years of LA stealing water (which has finally been overturned, so the lake should return to its natural level in the next few years)

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Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States (14,505 feet). This is nowhere close to where the rest of the photos were taken though; it's probably 150 miles down the road on highway 395. Whitney is just to the right of the two pronounced spires, and is not far from the Manzanar camp the US kept American citizens of Japanese descent at in WWII (shame, Roosevelt). There's not even a sign telling you you're passing by it on the road, so you have to know what you're looking for.

I really want to climb this, but haven't been able to get a permit the last two years. You have to get in a lottery to get a wilderness permit from the Inyo National Forest to do it, and I haven't been able to get it either year. It's so popular that it's the only trail I know of that requires a permit just to day hike it, much less camp there. I think I'm going to just do the 220 mile John Muir trail, which finishes at Whitney, in the next 2-3 years or so, as reservations that start on a connecting trail are good for Whitney.



Here's a couple of better pics of it from other websites:

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Next up, some pics from the Grand Canyon...

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Here is the road to the Westernmost entrance to the South Rim of the Canyon. As you can see from the smoke, there was a fire pretty close-by. Luckily, the smoke didn't reach all the way to the rim except to the east of main viewing areas.

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I only had a couple of hours there and don't know it well, so I can't tell what each formation is. I'll just say the pics to the west were extremely clear, and the smoke made the pics to the east pretty bad. Here's a nice one to the west:

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The layers of stratification are really beautiful in this pic.

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The Coloroado just visible through the smoke

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