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coldwater camp
Aug. 12th, 2008 06:33 pmWe camped the first night at Coldwater campground, located near the end of the Lake Mary road out of Mammoth, right next to the Duck Pass trailhead.
Coldwater was typical car camping at a popular spot, with all 77 campsites filling up by nightfall, almost everyone with huge RV's, dogs, generators, etc, a scene that is at once very much familiar but also perplexing: A couple hundred people gather in a small area of land to "get away from it all," bringing as many comforts from home as possible, all having separate campfires, and trying to pretend the other campers don't exist. One can't help but think that it's a culturally significant activity. How is camping different in other countries? We were more interested in meeting other people, and I pondered the notion of a campsite pot-luck, or at least a communal campfire. Also: at $19/night, the Inyo National Forest campsites cost more to rent than my apartment!
In the morning we broke camp, ate a big breakfast/lunch, and drove up to the trailhead. Here we are:
The hike from the Coldwater trailhead up to Duck Lake is short (~5 miles) and up hill, climbing from 9000 feet to the pass at 10800 feet, then dropping down to Duck and Pika lakes at 10500 feet.
Always associated with backpacking, at least for me, has been an obsession with food, driven both by exertion and the knowledge that you'll be subsisting on rather minimal fixings for the next several days.
"Let me know when you start thinking about food. I'm already daydreaming about eating some ribs!" I told Bree.
The hiker is rewarded immediately upon departing the trailhead by the alpine lakes Arrowhead, Skelton, Red, and Barney. We were fresh, so the the thousand-foot climb to the pass went quickly. From there, looking back, we saw this:
Coldwater was typical car camping at a popular spot, with all 77 campsites filling up by nightfall, almost everyone with huge RV's, dogs, generators, etc, a scene that is at once very much familiar but also perplexing: A couple hundred people gather in a small area of land to "get away from it all," bringing as many comforts from home as possible, all having separate campfires, and trying to pretend the other campers don't exist. One can't help but think that it's a culturally significant activity. How is camping different in other countries? We were more interested in meeting other people, and I pondered the notion of a campsite pot-luck, or at least a communal campfire. Also: at $19/night, the Inyo National Forest campsites cost more to rent than my apartment!
In the morning we broke camp, ate a big breakfast/lunch, and drove up to the trailhead. Here we are:
The hike from the Coldwater trailhead up to Duck Lake is short (~5 miles) and up hill, climbing from 9000 feet to the pass at 10800 feet, then dropping down to Duck and Pika lakes at 10500 feet.
Always associated with backpacking, at least for me, has been an obsession with food, driven both by exertion and the knowledge that you'll be subsisting on rather minimal fixings for the next several days.
"Let me know when you start thinking about food. I'm already daydreaming about eating some ribs!" I told Bree.
The hiker is rewarded immediately upon departing the trailhead by the alpine lakes Arrowhead, Skelton, Red, and Barney. We were fresh, so the the thousand-foot climb to the pass went quickly. From there, looking back, we saw this:
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