Eastern Sierras, Owens Valley, drives, rides, hikes and views. WoW.

We spent a fair bit of time in the Owens Valley, tucked in between the Sierra mountains in the west, and the White and Inyo mountains to the east, it’s a beautiful place with all sorts of recreation, easy to accessible rides, a ton of history, flora, and oh, the views.

The California Trail Users’ Coalition has some tremendous resources, physical maps that correspond to the Avenza maps – useful for off highway travel, camping and hiking. Public land is enviously easily accessible, and we are so pleased for the opportunities it gave us!

Bishop Tourist info is staff by such informed and helpful folks; that really enabled us to make the most of our stay there.

The Owens Valley previously, was lush with orchards. Apparently the city of Los Angeles began buying properties during the depression (perhaps before and since) for the water rights of the valley. Over time, the area has turned into the high desert. Owens Lake is now a dry lake and at some point, L.A. was mandated by court order to keep some water in it. When the lake was too dry, the arsenic levels in the air were toxic.

Some of the sites we experienced while at Owens Valley:

Manzanar National Historic Site, which is one of the relocation camps that the Americans of Japanese descent were incarcerated in;

Ancient Bristlecone Forest at Schulman Grove, a place that is just awe inspiring. Trees as old as dirt, literally; 10,000′ elevation. The info centre was closed, but the park had just lost enough snow for us to do a very small hike up there. We’re in shorts, traversing in the snow.

We headed a few kms north to Mammoth Ski Resort (where we were woefully underdressed), and took in a very delicious lunch at Schutt’s Bakkery, which is locally revered. For good reason.

Laws’ Railway Museum; a throwback to when the valley had an active railroad, and supported many industries of a forgotten time and era. The volunteer at the centre grew up in Laws, when the valley was an orchard, in the late 40s and 50s. The area is now considered high desert.

While we were at Death Valley, Lone Pine and some rides in the area, we saw and heard many jets flying over head. Owens Airforce base is close by and we were deafened and awestruck by the big birds.

As is so often the case, we meet people on our trip who share very valuable information and experiences which help us decide where we go and what we might do. While we were in Mesquite Spring campground at Death Valley, we had a really interesting conversation with this fellow, Keith Schwab, who told us a lot about Owens Valley, and the mountains that make it so. While chatting with Keith he told us about his rather amazing past time, of soaring in gliders. Wow, we thought our motorbiking was cool – not! … He has ambitions on gliding higher than anyone has done in a long time… Safe gliding to you Keith!

An outcome for us – we did a very taxing ride, from Bishop, down to Big Pine over to the Death Valley Road and down to Saline Valley, looking for Warm Springs ~ 230kms. It was great, until it wasn’t. It’s quite remote down there; and while there are people in the area, it was a really tough ride. Washboard for days, hot, and then there were no signs to the springs, so we spent a fair bit of time looking for the turnoff. Can they not leave a signpost up, really? We did get there, but we were both baked, and we still had to get back. Anyway, it was along haul, and I definitely had a harder time with this ride. Close to tossing it all in, I was.

After a bit of time and decompressing, we have come to the conclusion that this really remote, and taxing riding won’t be in our future any more. Of the many thousands of kilometres of riding we’ve done, on and off highways, we’ve been fortunate, maybe even lucky, to have no major mechanicals or injuries. To keep it this way, we’re toning down the toughness of the rides. We love DV, but, that specifically is too hard riding, and it does diminish the enjoyment. Owens Valley looks really promising, extremely beautiful riding, not hard to get to, not too far away, and not too hard to ride. Bonus, bonus, bonus.

So, that’s it for our spring 2022 ride-writeup, some photos here.