The Eastern Sierra
A two-mile wall of granite over a desert valley, the oldest living things on Earth, and hot springs under the darkest skies in California.
Everything over here is vertical. The Sierra crest doesn't taper on its east side — it falls, ten thousand feet from the summit of Mount Whitney to the sagebrush floor of Owens Valley, one of the steepest mountain fronts on the continent. US-395 runs the base of that wall for two hundred miles, and everything in this guide hangs off it: the turquoise glacial lakes of the Palisades, the tufa towers of Mono Lake, the world's best bouldering outside Bishop, Mammoth's volcano-built ski country, and — across the valley in the White Mountains — bristlecone pines that were already old when the pyramids were new. It is the Sierra with the crowds wrung out and the scale turned up.
The Eastern Sierra is the raw edge of the fault block. The range tilts like a trapdoor — long gentle slope to the west, sheer hinge on the east — and this is the hinge: an escarpment that gains two vertical miles in barely ten horizontal ones. Owens Valley at its foot is often called the deepest valley in America, walled by the 14,000-foot Sierra on one side and the 14,000-foot White Mountains on the other. And the ground here is still busy. The Long Valley Caldera east of Mammoth marks a supervolcano eruption 760,000 years ago that dropped ash as far as Nebraska; its leftover heat still boils Hot Creek and feeds every roadside hot spring in the guide. Devils Postpile's basalt columns, the Mono Craters, and Mono Lake itself — over a million years old, among the oldest lakes in North America — round out a landscape where glaciers, faults, and volcanoes all left the scaffolding showing. The Palisade Glacier, largest in the Sierra and southernmost in the United States, still grinds away beneath North Palisade's 14,242-foot crown.
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See plans →The John Muir Trail is the reason many people become backpackers, and the reason many others save it for the end of a long appr…
The Big Pine Lakes are the trip that launches a thousand Eastern Sierra obsessions. The North Fork trail out of Glacier Lodge c…
The Postpile's 60-foot wall of hexagonal basalt columns is one of the world's finest examples of columnar jointing, and the gla…
The postcard of the Eastern Sierra: a short, near-flat loop through the surreal rounded boulders of the Alabama Hills to Mobius…
Convict Lake is one of the most beautiful lakes in the Eastern Sierra — a jewel of deep blue water cradled beneath dramatic, co…
The Mammoth Lakes Basin is a camper's paradise — a cluster of jewel-like alpine lakes (Mary, George, Twin, Horseshoe) ringed by…
The Alabama Hills are one of the most photogenic places to camp in California — a jumble of surreal, rounded granite formations…
Crowley Lake, spread across the sagebrush flats of Long Valley south of Mammoth, is the most famous trout lake in the Eastern S…
The Upper Owens is the Eastern Sierra's premier trophy-trout water — a meandering spring-creek meadow stream flowing through Lo…
Convict Lake may be the most photogenic trout lake in California — a deep, clear, blue-green oval cradled beneath the ramparts …
The June Lake Loop is a fishing vacation in miniature — four distinct lakes strung along a 16-mile scenic horseshoe beneath the…
The best lift-served mountain bike park in California, and by many accounts the best in the US. Mammoth Mountain's 80+ miles of…
Mountain View is the Eastern Sierra ridge descent that everyone remembers - a long, winding pumice singletrack off the San Joaq…
The Owens Valley is one of the legendary paragliding destinations on earth. The first 100-mile cross-country flights in the Uni…
Bishop sits at the base of the Eastern Sierra, in the shadow of the White Mountains to the east and the Sierra Nevada to the we…
The Buttermilks, spread across a high desert bench beneath the 13,000-foot wall of Mt. Tom west of Bishop, are the world capita…
The Owens River Gorge — 'the Gorge' to Eastside climbers — is California's most concentrated sport-climbing destination, a 10-m…
The Happy and Sad Boulders are Bishop's winter bouldering heart - a labyrinth of pocketed volcanic tuff in the Volcanic Tablela…
The Palisades are the alpine heart of the High Sierra - the range's most concentrated cluster of 14,000-foot peaks and its most…
The East Face of Mount Whitney is one of the landmark climbs of American alpine history - the 1931 route by Norman Clyde, Rober…
The Alabama Hills, a dreamlike jumble of rounded granite boulders and delicate natural arches spread beneath the soaring wall o…
Most of the millions of people who drive Highway 395 between Mammoth Lakes and Reno every year pass the Jack Sawyer Road turnof…
Mammoth Mountain is the undisputed flagship of California skiing — 3,500 acres, a summit at 11,053 feet (highest lift-served sk…
Mammoth Lakes is the hub of Eastern Sierra backcountry skiing in a way no other California mountain town matches. The combinati…
Little Lakes Valley delivers more High Sierra beauty per mile than almost any hike in California — a moderate 8-mile round trip…
Big Pine Lakes holds some of the most jaw-dropping water in California — a chain of alpine lakes whose glacial silt turns them …
Thousand Island Lake is the postcard that sold the Sierra to the world — a broad, island-studded alpine lake set directly benea…
The Cottonwood Lakes offer the rare combination of a very high starting elevation and relatively gentle terrain, which makes th…
Evolution Basin is, by wide agreement, the most beautiful stretch of the entire John Muir Trail — a chain of shimmering alpine …
If Thousand Island Lake is the Ansel Adams Wilderness's famous face, Ediza Lake is its wild heart — a deep alpine lake set dire…
The signature Bishop-area march — a chain of jewel lakes leads to an 11,972-foot pass beneath Mts. Goode and Agassiz, then drop…
These gnarled bristlecones are the oldest individual living things on the planet — some were already millennia old when the pyr…
Lundy Canyon packs beaver ponds, tumbling cascades, and the densest aspen display on the east side into a gentle streamside wal…
The signature day hike of the southern Eastern Sierra crest. From Onion Valley the trail climbs relentlessly but scenically pas…
The way to sample the legendary Mt. Whitney Trail without winning the lottery. The first 2.8 miles climb steadily through Jeffr…
The Rock Creek drainage above Toms Place climbs to some of the highest and most spectacular car-camping in California — a strin…