I planned this trip with Justdropin’ aka Cris whom I had met through Backpacker.com. I drove over Walker Pass and up 395 to Lone Pine and then up to the Cottonwood Lakes Trailhead on the Inyo National Forest on Wednesday the 24th. I wanted to spend the night there before hiking out the next day so as to get acclimated. The trailhead is at 10,000’ in elevation. And the road going up there out of Lone Pine is crazy! It is quite an engineering marvel as it switchbacks right up the side of the mountain climbing from 4,000’ to 10,000’ in the span of only a few miles. I picked up a hitchhikin backpacker along the way, his name was Mike and he gave me some good advice about acclimating to high elevations.
At the Cottonwood Lakes Trailhead there are a few walk-in campsites that are $6 per night. They are close to one another so I was glad that there was only one other party camped there that night. There is also a larger equestrian campground and a pack station at the trailhead.
On Thursday morning I awoke at sunrise, packed up my tent, and began organizing and packing my gear. Cris arrived an hour or so later and he brought me breakfast! I ate and finished packing up and then we were off!
Most of the first day was pretty easy hiking. The first 2 miles of trail go up and down a few moraines, you see a few meadows, and you cross the South Fork of Cottonwood Creek and then the main fork. Then the trail starts climbing rather steeply up to the Cottonwood Lakes Basin. Once you get there it’s incredible – the meadows and lakes and surrounding forests and mountains are breathtaking!
We stopped and ate lunch at the edge of the basin then pushed on to get up to Cottonwood Lake #4. This way our next day goal of Old Army Pass and Mt. Langley were relatively nearby. We found a campsite above the lake a ways and had one other guy camped nearby. His name was John and he was a nice guy who turns out was also planning on hiking up Langley the next day. |
