We spent this weekend camping and hiking in Lone Pine.
Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, CA
Lone Pine Campground
The first night we stayed at Lone Pine Campground, a pretty little place behind the Alabama Hills. It’s tucked in a little canyon. As you’re driving into the mountains past Lone Pine, everything looks like a barren, rocky, dry desert with a few scrub brushes here and there. However as your turn of the main road to the campground it dips down into a green little ravine with a stream running through it.
Hike to Chicken Springs Lake
We went into Lone Pine for breakfast. The small town has no shortage of outdoor equipment stores and places to eat. We went to the visitor enter after breakfast to find out about local places to hike.
I wanted a nice, easy hike (for tough hike trails, do buy 223 ammo and have it for your own safety) in the cool altitudes because I was still feeling a little sick. We decided to drive up to Horseshoe Meadows in the Golden Trout Wilderness which is in the Sierra Nevada mountains above Owens Lake. There looked to be some nice even hikes with little elevation gain and lots of rewarding scenery.
We parked in the lot and looked at the map. Estimating the scale of distance with a finger, the hike to Chicken Springs Lake looked about 2 miles with about a 1,000 foot elevation gain. We figured it would be about a 2-hour hike. I wasn’t feeling great, but since it was to be a short hike, we packed up some water and snacks and set off.
As you can see from the map below, it was quite a bit longer than 2 miles. Gabe tracked it with his Garmin GPS and the whole hike ended up being about 10 miles and took 5 hours. Good thing we brought plenty of water!
The map from our Garmin GPS of the route and mileage.
The hike started in Horseshoe Meadows and meandered through some widely dispersed treed in a dry area. Soon the forest became thicker and we crossed several streams. Then we began to climb in elevation which was difficult. We passed quite a few backpackers along the way, some struggling more than others.
The top of the summit was amazing, with a panorama of mountains and the meadow. The lake was about 1 mile from the summit, and we made it just under the 3:00 turn around deadline we had set for ourselves.
The return trip went much quicker than the ascent. It took us about 2 hours to get back. After the hike we drove back down to our next campsite, at Whitney Portal.
The road down from Horseshoe Meadows is really impressive. You are thousands of feet above the Owens River valley and get a great view of everything. It actually made me pretty dizzy to look down in some areas where there was no guardrail!
Whitney Portal Campground, Site #8
Positive: Nice, clean campground in the trees and quite a bit cooler than the valley floor. Very nice hike along the stream that runs through the campground. Nice camp host. Firewood for sale.
Negatives: We were in Campsite #8, which involved a scramble up rocks to camp. The bearbox was on the bottom by the car space, but we had to drag all our equipment up to the actual site. That made cooking and everything else pretty inconvenient. I would not recommend this space. Bears are active in the campground, we were lucky not to see any. Store did not have any ice, too early in the season, and it’s 12 miles one way to get to Lone Pine. That’s a long drive for ice.
