I recently got back from a road trip to Death Valley. The main purpose of the trip was to attend John Paul Caponigro’s Death Valley workshop which was excellent (I’ll write more about this later). For the trip back home I decided to take Hwy 395 to Tahoe and explore the Alabama Hills, Obsidian Dome, Devil’s Post Pile, Mono Lake, and Bodie. There are other stops along the way (such as the Bristle-cone Pines) but I had read up and found they were not accessible during the winter.
Well it turns out most of the sights along Hwy 395 were closed for winter. Nothing in my research had given me any indication that this would be the case and in looking at the map I didn’t realize that most of Hwy 395 was above 6000 ft. A big storm had come through the day before my trek so I was unable to get to visit any of the stops except Alabama Hills and some of Mono Lake. I will write more about both of these stops in future posts.
It was a great trip any way and one I plan to repeat in the summer.