Sunset Stories

"Your mountain is waiting..."

  Starting at sea-level San Francisco on a Tuesday summer afternoon, we start the three-day trek... past flatland towns, in-n-out of a strange discount Foodery, through a national park @10,000 feet, by an ancient endangered lake, in-n-out of a spooky brand-new grocery, through desolate high-desert towns @4,000 feet, polishing off a housewarming bottle o' whiskey with family, setting out Wednesday @8,000 feet dressed head to toe in spectacular man-made materials 'n heaving about 90 pounds, striking camp in the dark @10,500 ft, and finally, picking our way on Thursday up the final few precarious thousand feet to the nape of Mount Langley herself, @14,026 feet.

(despite an altitude-sick camera) Photos here.

Mystery of the Lone Pine Ashram

Intrigued for years by local lore of an ashram nestled in one of the canyons below Mount Whitney, we set out Wednesday morning from the Alabama Hills to see for ourselves.

Tuttle Creek to Granite View Road will take a car nearly all the way to the trail head, passing the Great Space Center ranch, a bee farm, and one lonely residence before turning into a narrow sandy trench and rising into the foothills.

Finally a flat turn-out spot appears between sage and pines and boulders, where we park and take the rest of the way on foot, following one of two intersecting washes on what the lush flora have taken over of what was once a road.

After about an hour of a thousand foot elevation gain in direct sun, a building can be seen on a outcropping ahead, with a final approach across a railroad-tie bridge and up a set of granite-chunk stairs to the site at eight thousand feet.

The windowless, door less structure is handsome and and vacant. Built in 1929 by Pasadena-born Dr. Franklin Wolff as a religious retreat, the concrete floor and granite walls are arranged in the shape of a balanced cross, and took over twenty years of summer work to complete. Wolff's yearly conventions later moved to his retirement home, the Great Space Center ranch where he died in 1985 at the age of 98. His granddaughter continues to use the center for spiritual education, and a group is said to conduct light maintenance of the stone house while the U. S. Forest Service debates disassembly of the deteriorating building.  

Cottonwood Lakes Loop

The four of us started out from Horseshoe Meadow with packs full of water and snacks, some fishing gear, and one boisterous black Labrador, for a day hike out in John Muir wilderness on Monday afternoon.

The trail head elevation is 10,000 feet, and it's a straightforward climb for four miles on a shady horse trail following Cottonwood Creek, climbing deeper into the back country south of Mount Whitney, till we emerge onto alpine meadow and the junction where the trail forms a loop around two sets of lakes. Last year we took it to the left, to Long Lake where we camped for two days below New Army Pass.

This year we stayed right and stopped at Cottonwood Lake 4 (11,200 feet) to eat and splash and fish for a bit in the shadow of granite piles and commanding juniper pines. With binoculars we could follow a set of hikers descending the switchbacks etched into the bowl below Old Army Pass.

We returned to Horseshoe, completing the 6 hour, 10-mile, class 2 hike (California Hiking; 2003 ed.).