I am kind of late at writing this post but we took this trip on the Thanksgiving weeking of 2009. We wanted to go camping and we were looking at one of two spots. Keough Hot Springs or try some place up in the mountains near Bishop, CA in the Inyo National Forest. I left it up to the kids. I told them that if we went into the mountains, it would likely get very cold. Desiree says to me, “Dad, if it is too cold we can come off the mountain. But lets try it first.” So we did.

We headed up into the Sierras from Bishop and went all the way to Lake Sabrina. Every campground was closed with a padalock on the entrances. We even tried the RV location up near some civilized lands near South Lake were we met someone that told us that about the only place we could camp at was Bitterbrush Campground – further below. And by the way, it is expected to snow tonight. We screamed and yelped with excitement.

We found Bitterbrush Campground at about the 6,800 foot elevation level. It had bathrooms without running water – better than nothing. It did have water spouts outside for water which were turned off for he winter. The campsites were nice and we were almost alone except one other family camped on the other side of the campground from us – only on the first night though.

It snowed about three inches on us that night.

The next morning after breakfast I threw on the chains and drove up into the higher elevations where the snow was just pouring in. The road past Aspendell was closed off completely. We starting to drive towards South Lake but the road was getting so deep in snow, I decided not to risk anymore at getting stuck. I mean the snow was up to the front bumper of the vehicle and so I was concerned.

We ended up finding one of the lakes in the area, stopped and played in the snow.

We had fun this day. Went down the mountain that evening to Bishop for dinner and went back and spent the night in the bitter cold.

We have learned that there is no need to be cold at night even when the temperatures are only in the teens. We take our backpacking sleeping bags that are rated for 20 degrees, place them inside our camping sleeping bags which are also rated for 20 degrees, and additionally wear full sweats. Placing these bags on our cots with backpacking sleeping pads on top of the cots, we sleep quite well.

By Saturday afternoon, we wanted to do some fishing. The only place legal to fish up there in the winter time is down in the valley on the Kern River. Desiree did the fishing and successfully pulled in a couple of good sized trout. Guess we failed to take some pictures. But we did talk to a guy who runs a business of teaching people how to fly fish. Hopefully someday, we will take advantage of his services.

Sierra Drifters Guide Service
Tom Loe
Phone: 760-935-4250
Mobile: 760-937-2015
1645 Crowley Lake Drive
Mammoth Lakes, CA 93546
Email: diftfish@qnet.com

The trip was a success and a lot of fun. Don’t be surpised if we do it again. Psycho Dad takes kids camping in the snow.