Mammoth Lakes Hiking

We moved from Convict Lake to a campground near the town of Mammoth Lakes. This is a great location, in the woods and very quiet, but just outside town and biking distance to everything.  We have been bogged down with trying to get our refrigerator fixed (not an easy thing in a small town like this), doing some other maintenance on the RV and hiding out from the daily thunderstorms every afternoon.  Today we finally got out and did a good hike up to Emerald Lake and Sky Meadows.

The town of Mammoth Lakes is unique in that it is a sizable town with grocery stores, restaurants and hardware stores, but just a five minute drive outside of town is the lakes basin, comprising five large lakes you can drive to and several that are a short hike away.  The John Muir wilderness and the beautiful Sierra high country is so close.

The hike up to Sky Meadows was about two miles and 1,000 vertical feet of elevation gain.  We first passed Emerald Lake and chatted with a woman (who was painting a picture of the lake) and her husband. You can see the dramatic Mammoth crest above the lake in the picture below.  Yosemite is on the other side (west of us) of the crest.

Emerald Lake

Just above the lake, the trail followed a little creek up to the meadows, which were spectacularly situated below high peaks.

We had lunch at the meadow and scrambled up a rock hill to get a higher view of the meadow.  We also got a self-timer picture of the three of us up there.

The hike was beautiful and as a bonus, presented lots of opportunities to take pictures of the creeks as they tumbled down through the meadows and woods.  It was a moving water photographer's dream landscape!