Explorations with the Ski3pins: Eastern Sierra Hiking – September 2025

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The High Rent District

Not only is it busy, it is expensive to stay overnight in a concessionaire run USFS campground in this area. Because of the heavy use, it is also required that campers stay in designated open campgrounds. The fee for staying at Saddlebag Campground was $30 a night or $15 (half) with a geezer card. It’s good to be an old fart.

Leaving Saddlebag on a cold clear morning, I needed a new book to read so we stopped at the Mono Lake Committee Bookstore in Lee Vining. We picked up a copy of Nellie of Lundy.

It was the beginning of fall leaf peeping in the Bishop area. The aspens were just beginning to change. We made the mistake of driving up to North, South, and Sabrina lakes and got caught in traffic and crowds. What were we thinking? We desperately needed solitude and returned to the Volcanic Tablelands. We were alone surrounded by the song of coyotes. First light the next morning was delightful along with the variegated Bishop Tuff from the eruption of the Long Valley Caldera 760,000 years ago.

We camped near an archaeological site we had found last spring. It’s a large habitation site with stacked rock sleeping circles and grinding slicks (metates).

Up, as always, was the desired direction for our morning coffee walk.

The vistas from the high point were well worth the effort.

The Lady suggested our next adventure should be hiking up McGee Canyon to Steelhead Lake. We found both the campground and trailhead too busy or close quartered and continued further north. We drove into Convict Lake and found a nice private first come first serve site in the campground. The campground and area was, quite surprisingly, not crowded, many campsites were empty, so we decided to stay. This would allow us to do a hike that’s been on the list for a long time but we’ve avoided due to the crowds.

It’s $35 a night to stay at Convict Lake Campground. Geezer’s rate is $17.50 for us old farts. This sure is the high rent district on the east side.

We found a doe sound asleep in the sun in the empty site across from us. She barely lifted her head when I discovered her and then went back to sleep.

We circled Convict Lake in the afternoon. We stopped at the inlet on the opposite side of the lake and once again to watch the incoming thunderstorm.

We got hit hard by the storm with rain and close lightning strikes. As soon as it cleared, we were back outside with mule deer that frequent this campground and tolerate humans.

The forecast was for no storms the next day so we went ahead with our plan to go high. We got an early start (not alpine) from our campsite. Convict Lake was glass.

The Convict Creek Basin contains the oldest rocks in the Sierra Nevada. Ancient sedimentary rock has been cooked, up lifted, folded, metamorphosed by the much younger rising granite beneath it. This is one place in the Sierra Nevada where it has all not been eroded away. The rock is colorful, striking, and stark – a joy to behold and an even bigger joy to travel through on foot.

Most people only hike the trail around Convict Lake. Use really thins out when you continue up Convict Creek Canyon and into the Johnny Muir as we did.

We started from our campsite so add a mile and a half to the distance to Lake Dorothy.

The east side canyons are extremely steep. In several places debris flows have taken out the trail. But the rock is incredible.

The last view of Convict Lake was early in the climb.

When we reached the remaining footings for the bridge that was destroyed years ago, we wondered who came up with the idea of putting a bridge here, in this gorge pounded by avalanche, spring snowmelt, and debris flows.

We crossed Convict Creek and continued up up up.

We were stopped so many times in awe of our surroundings.

The trail leveled out when we reached the upper basin that holds Mildred Lake.

There’s a small bridge at the outlet of Convict Creek.

Mildred Lake

We were in, as Mark Twain wrote in Roughing It, the air the angels breathe.

Lake Dorothy is several hundred feet higher. We continued up.

A trail intersection before Lake Dorothy.

Dorothy, a large lake, sits at 10,260 feet, the same elevation of our campsite at Saddlebag.

Since leaving Convict Lake we’d met only one other person, and that was much lower on the trail. We were at home in the quiet and solitude up here.

Our turnaround time was 1330 hrs. Here are the sights on our hike back down.

The campground served our purpose for access to hiking up Convict Creek Canyon, but after a second night here, we were anxious to leave the next morning.

Our first stop was an amazing place so few people know about – the starting point of the Owens River. Deadman Creek begins on the east flank of San Joaquin Mountain, just north of Mammoth, and flows through the Inyo Craters. Where Deadman Creek joins the water flowing out of Big Springs, this is the birth of the Owens River.