#hotcreek

[alittletornandfrayed]

“EVERYBODY needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” - John Muir

[rie-k-photo]

Hot Creek at sunrise by matman73072 https://flic.kr/p/M364Qb

[new-lifestyle-secrets]

Good times riding with the #xladv high Sierra rally 2021. More pics to come #advrally #advrider #adventurebikeriders #hotcreek #mammothlakes (at Mammoth Lakes, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTfsEAzBc8gDy6gTIwQcaeyhUyQ3cCL0xTImdI0/?utm_medium=tumblr

[floridamanontherun]

I could have basked in the sun all day enjoying this view of Hot Creek. Hard to beat vibrant blue skies and mountain views. Just don't go swimming in the water! ° ° #hotcreek #hotcreekgeologicalsite #mammothlakes #monocounty #california #sierranevada #mountainsonthehorizon #vibrantsky #bluesky #mountainviews #geologyrocks #traveler #travelblogger #highsierra https://www.instagram.com/p/CERmymyBLN_/?igshid=uf229nuybcu2

[iamnotthedog]

THE MAMMOTH LAKES HOT SPRINGS: JULY 2000

The second big event of that first summer in Yosemite had to do with another road trip in King’s powder blue 1964 Volkswagen Type 2 split-window microbus. That road trip was about a month after our San Francisco adventure, and we had all been doing nothing but working and hiking around the valley and up to the high country for weeks—relaxing, taking in the natural wonders of the park, “living the dream,” as they say. Leah and I had been getting along well, despite the fact that I think we both pretty much knew that it was going to be over between us as soon as the summer wound to a close. And Laura had started a job up in Tuolumne Meadows and had pretty much disappeared, which I was more than okay with. Just seeing her made me feel like a piece of shit at that point.

One warm and fragrant Friday afternoon, Leah was in our bed in the cabin, reading and feeling kind of under the weather. She didn’t want to leave Boystown, but I had the next two days off, so I walked through the rows of tent cabins and over to King’s place to see what he wanted to do that weekend. Allyson, Heather, and this really shy and clever short-haired climber named Sam were all sitting around outside King’s cabin tent, chatting.

“Hey Dan!” Heather said. She was pumping up the back tire on a Schwinn borrowed from the Curry Village Recreation Center. “Did King find you?”

“No. I was in my cabin.”

“We’re going to Mammoth!” Allyson said.

“The place with the hot river?”

“It’s called Hot Creek. That thing scares me,” Heather said. “There are these boiling hot pockets of water that’ll bubble up from below and burn the shit out of you.”

“Jesus.”

“We’re just going to find a nice hot tub and camp out,” Allyson said. “The tubs are like 95 to 105 degrees. Perfect. And it’s getting close to the New Moon, so the stars up there will be unbelievable.”

I turned to walk back to the cabin to see if I could get Leah out of bed, but King had beaten me to it. As soon as I turned around, the two of them rounded the corner by the employee kitchen and waved. I could tell King had smoked some weed with her. That was literally the only thing you could do to get her out of bed sometimes.

“HOT SPRINGS, MOTHERFUCKER!” King yelled, jumping at me like a fuckin’ samurai or something. “I’m ready if you all are.”

“What do we need to bring?” Sam asked.

“I already got some firewood, water, snacks, and beer,” King said. “So absolutely nothing if you aren’t afraid of getting your underwear a little wet.”

“Or going in the nude,” I added.

Heather laughed. “No way. Those rocks around the tubs can get HOT.”

“And there are bugs,” Allyson added. “Little things with a million legs.”

Three hours later we had wound our way up Tioga Road and out the eastern entrance of the park, south on the 395 past Lee Vining into the wide open Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area—the flat, high altitude desert landscape and sage brush giving way to snow-capped mountains on every horizon—past Highway 158 that takes you on a loop, up into those mountains to the west, up past Grant Lake, Silver Lake, June Lake, and then back out east to the 395 and the Mono Basin, where we continued south, passing from the desert landscape into a forest of pine, then up, past Obsidian Dome, Lookout Mountain, Dry Creek Road, all the way until a wide turn where it looks like you are coming to the end of the world, nothing but heavenly blue and white mountains in front of you, sky above and desert behind, and then a sign for 203: Mammoth Lakes, Devils Postpile. We blew right past the 203 and drove about nine more miles south, still absolutely awestruck by the mountain views on all sides until rolling back into a desert landscape, passing the Mammoth Yosemite Airport, then turning onto a two-way road that took us east, past “Whitmore Pool Public Swimming,” through three more miles of hot, dry desert—snow-capped mountains at our backs, now—and then across a cattle guard, down a small hill, turning left on a dirt road, following a right fork in the road, and rolling up on a log-fenced parking area and, about a hundred feet away, a steaming cement hot tub—“Pulky’s Pool”—with just about the most amazing view of the Sierra Nevada that one can get all at once, especially while sitting in a hot tub.

“Holy shit,” King said, as we first got the view of the tub, the mountains beyond.

“This is unbelievable,” Sam added.

Right next to the steaming hot tub was a blackened fire pit fashioned from a few round, basketball-sized rocks. Opposite the fire pit, on the other side of the tub, was a log split length-wise, meant to serve as a bench. And other than that, there was nothing but desert, mountains, and sky.

The sun was still a good hour from setting, but as it dipped down towards the mountains on the western horizon, the hot, dry desert air immediately began to cool.

“I’m going to be in that tub real soon,” said Allyson, cracking a beer. She tossed me one, as well, and I pounded it, then started rolling us some joints.

King laid out his huge ten-man tent on a relatively flat surface a good twenty feet from the tub. “Dan,” he said, after a good five minutes of wrestling with the tent poles. I was really into my joint rolling—forming each of them into a perfect, cone-shaped tube, packing the ends and twisting them just so, biting my lip in concentration—and I hadn’t been paying the least bit of attention to him. “Dan,” he said again. He lifted the poles over his head. “Help a brother out.”

So we got our camp all set up and we got drunk—rip-roaring drunk—and we took some Ecstasy, and we of course smoked a bus load of weed and spent a LOT of time—an unhealthy amount of time, actually—soaking in the scalding hot water as the entire Milky Way lit up the desert sky above. And being out there so early in the evening, we were all wasted and completely anaesthetized by the hot tub by ten o’clock, when we each crawled into our sleeping bags in King’s big tent and passed out. And I know that’s all pretty boring, actually, but none of that is why I’m telling you this story. I’m telling you this story because the next day we all just about died.

We woke up pretty early, basically because that desert sun can really do a number on you as soon as it gets the least bit high in the sky—especially when it’s the middle of the summer and you’re cuddled up in a warm sleeping back in a zipped-up tent with five other people and all their hot breath in your face. It was probably over a hundred degrees in the tent at like eight o’clock in the morning.

“HOLY FUCK, IT’S HOT,” King groaned, waking all of us simultaneously and rolling over us to get to the tent door. He zipped it open and we all shoved our way out of our respective sleeping bags and moaned in relief as a cool breeze blew into the tent.

After another hour, though, there were no more cool desert breezes. We had already drank our morning coffee and smoked a little weed to take the previous night’s edge off, and the higher that impossibly bright sun was getting in the sky, the more uncomfortable we were all getting. So we decided it was time to leave.

The thing was, though, that once we piled packed into the bus (which was also unbearably hot inside), the thing wouldn’t start. It wouldn’t even turn over. And King just turned around and smiled that big smile of his and said, “Well...fuck.”

Everyone stayed miraculously calm at first, while King knelt at the back of the bus and crawled underneath the thing, trying to see what he could see in his engine. He was at that for a good hour. The thing is, though, that with those old Volkswagens you have to drop the engine a lot of the time in order to see anything. They aren’t the easiest vehicles to do any sort of maintenance on, really, and King of course knew that.

“I’m going to need some AAA on this one,” he finally said.

Heather, Sam, Allyson, Leah, and I were all sitting in a row on the ground, facing King and the bus, watching him and sweating our asses off.

“There was a house or a trailer sort of thing back by the Whitmore Pool,” Sam said. “What was that? Two miles? I’ll walk back there with you and we can see if they’ll let us use their phone.”

King wiped his oily hands off on his shirt and clapped them together. “That’s what we’re going to have to do,” he said. He looked at his pocket watch. “It’s ten thirty. You all stay right here, and Sam and I will be back by noon.”

“You want me to come along?” I offered.

“No,” King said. “At least one guy should stay back here.” He looked at Heather, Allyson, and Leah. “You know, just because.”

“Shit,” Allyson said, “I would fucking murder Dan in a fight.”

“You’re already ridiculously sunburnt, Dan,” Heather said. “You need shade.”

I touched the back of my neck. It hurt like hell—a deep, icy burn. I pulled a t-shirt out of my pack and wrapped it over my head and ears like a turban, draping it down over my neck as Allyson hunted through her pack for some sunscreen, which she ended up not being able to find.

“We’ll be back before you know it,” King said. And he and Sam loaded up a pack with a few bottles of water and started walking north, down the dirt road, away from the tub and the bus, away from us, out into the desert.

The minutes stretched into hours. We couldn’t sit in the bus, because even with the windows down it was scorching hot inside. We tried setting up the tent again, but sitting in the tent was also unbearable. We ended up using the tent poles to drape the tent over the side door of the bus, so we could sit outside but still have some shade—but even that only lasted a good hour or so before the sun had shifted and the tent only offered a foot-long rectangle of shadow.

“This is unbearable,” Heather said.

“It’s three o’clock,” Allyson added. “We aren’t even going to get back to the park before sundown.”

I was pushing my thumb onto my reddened forearm, watching the skin get super pale for a second, then quickly revert back to purplish-red color when I lifted my thumb off. “I’m so pale, I’m getting sunburnt sitting in the shade.” I said. I forced a laugh.

“Well, you aren’t in the shade anymore,” Leah pointed out.

I lifted the t-shirt off my head and looked around. The small shadow I had been seated in was a good three feet behind me.

“We need to smoke more weed,” Allyson said.

“But we’re out of water!” Heather countered.

“I’m almost out of sanity.”

“Well, roll one up, then.”

“I would, but we’re out of papers.”

“King’s got a bowl stashed somewhere.”

“SHUT UP!” Leah yelled. It took us all off guard. “Just SHUT THE FUCK UP. We’re going to DIE out here, and you all are just...” She stormed off to the other side of the bus and sat in the hot sand.

Heather dug around in the bus for a few minutes looking for King’s bowl, then laid on the floor in the back of the bus next to the open door and closed her eyes. Allyson sat on the ground and leaned back against the rear wheel of the bus and closed her eyes, as well. I walked around the bus and looked down at Leah, who looked absolutely miserable, and had this wicked scowl on her face. I got pretty angry. I had no right to be angry with her for anything, really. I mean, there was nothing we could do about it. About anything. It was all just the heat or the sunburn or whatever in that particular instance, but I really couldn’t see why Leah had to be bringing everybody down with her all the time—not just then. I don’t know. I was being selfish.

I walked away from the bus, out over towards the tub, where I laid on the bench and looked a the snow-capped mountains in the distance and tried to think about winter—about Christmas in Illinois, about shoveling the driveway, about building a snow man.

After a few minutes, Leah came and sat next to me. I thought she was going to apologize, but she started saying, “I didn’t even want to come out here.”

I interrupted her. “I’m over this.”

“What?” she asked.

“I’m over this.”

She stood over me, looked down into my face that I was still trying to shade with my t-shirt. “What are you talking about?”

“I can’t keep dong this,” I said. I didn’t want to be saying it, really. It was just pouring out of me. “I just need to move on and live my life and not be responsible for anything but my own well being for a while.”

Leah mouth quivered and turned down into a frown. She was starting to cry. “You are not doing this to me,” she said. “Dan, you brought me out here. You are not doing this to me.”

I turned my head and looked back out at the mountains, and all was completely silent. Not a sound. A few minutes passed like that, then, from what sounded like far, far away, we heard a tiny little voice, like a single bubble of sound floating in a vast pool of silence. “Hey!”

It was King. I stood and walked back over to the bus, leaving Leah back at the bench to stare out over the desert and wonder what just happened. I myself wasn’t quite sure, but with each day I could see a new beginning, and Leah just kept bringing me back to somewhere I didn’t want to be anymore. I didn’t want to look back.

Heather and Allyson were up and walking around the bus to look down the long dirt road, where we saw King and Sam, just dots on the expansive desert landscape, walking side by side, waving their hands over their heads. And they were still really far away, but it looked like they were smiling.

“How the fuck are they so happy right now?” Allyson said, laughing.

“I have no idea,” said Heather.

Seeing King and Sam both bouncing along all jovial like that—stranded in the blazing hot desert, out of drinking water and having just walked who knows how many miles to use a goddamned telephone—it practically brought a tear to my eye.

“What a couple of good sports,” I said.

When they got close enough to talk to us without screaming, Sam said, “We had to walk almost all the way back to Mammoth Lakes!” King said a tow truck from AAA was on its way, but it was coming from the opposite direction, so the driver wouldn’t offer them a ride. “He’s going to hate the fuck out of me when he realizes where we are, so fuck ‘m, anyways!” he said. He laughed. Then he spun around a couple times with his arms out to his side and said, “What a hike! It’s gorgeous out here.”

Even Leah got a laugh out of that.

[inkparkco]

HOT CREEK!! Mammoth is so cool!! Love nature!! #mammoth #hotcreek #mountains #vacation #art #nature #inspirations

[mtnrunner2013]

Saturday 5/5/18 early morning Iris’ - Bishop, Ca. #MammothLakes #sonyalpha #sonya7riii #395 #EasternSierra #VisitMammoth #MammothStories #MammothRecreation #MammothMountain #hwy395 #MonoCounty #MonoCountyTourism #Bishop #VisitBishop #MonoCounty #VisitMonoCounty #MonoLakeCa #VisitInyoCounty #MammothStories #VisitMonoLake #travelphotography #MonoLakeCalifornia #HotCreek #EasternSierra #SonyAlphasClub (at Bishop, California)

[mtnrunner2013]

One more from; Amazing sunset in the Eastern Sierra Tuesday 01/16/18. Hot Creek area near Mammoth Lakes, Ca. ~ Mammoth Mountain. A sky that really did not look to promising at first, suddenly morphed into an amazing sunset. #MammothLakes #sonyalpha #sonya7riii #395 #EasternSierra #MonoLake #VisitMammoth #MammothStories #MammothRecreation #MammothMountain #hwy395 #MonoCounty #MonoCountyTourism #Bishop #VisitBishop #HotCreek #MammothYosemiteAirport (at Hot Creek)