A Coyote's Ministry

As my Fox and I grow older we are becoming more and more creatures of habit.

Either that, or we just know what we like. We've been trekking to the Owens Valley every Easter for a few years now, and this year was no exception. Perhaps it is the majesty of the eastern Sierra, viewed from the desert depths of the valley floor, that attracts us. Perhaps it is the multitude of desert and mountain four wheel drive trails that appeals to us. We are, after all, a family of four wheelers, the hobby spanning three generations of the coyotes from soCal. Or maybe it is the virtual isolation that can still be found in the mountains of the Sierra and the Inyos. I know that's when I feel best, when I don't have a million fellow occupants of the planet squeezed in all around me. It's kind of nice being able to roam the countryside and not have to keep tipping one's hat every few seconds by way of greeting.

One of our trips was up Mazourka Canyon. Our entire trip up and back, we saw not a soul, although we did see a small school bus at the lower end of the canyon on the way out. I enjoyed the pseudo-solitude immensely. I say pseudo because we weren't really alone...

This year we were accompanied by several young travelers. My son Mike invited his girlfriend and several of his friends from church and university to come along and experience the great outdoors with us. Needless to say, The Fox and I were quite amenable to this, as we know all the young folk involved, and have in fact watched many of them grow up with our own children. Mike's friend and long-time mentor, Matt, rented a thirty four foot motor home for the adventure. This became a bunkhouse of sorts, where all the young males including both my sons spent those hours not industriously engaged in bouldering, hiking, four-wheeling, and other outdoor endeavors. Our little portable casita then served to give The Fox and I a place to escape the noise and confusion of the male bunkhouse, and also a safe haven for Mike's girlfriend Kelli and our daughter Katie. As usual, the elder coyotes were along also, to lend an air of stable maturity to what otherwise might have devolved into a week-long gigglefest. My father also provided one of the three four-wheel vehicles in the fleet, along with our beast and Mike's Jeep Cherokee.

I felt a bit guilty for not dropping by The Ol' Raccoon's new digs, but we had our paws full with all the youngsters, and I didn't think Mike and Chris needed to deal with a house full of kids they'd never seen, so we passed on the opportunity to visit. I'm sure our paths will cross again sometime soon.

Please note that all images, text, and coding on these page are copyright © Paul J. Lorona, 2006.
Permission to use must be obtained in writing prior to use.
Photos taken with a Fuji 1800 by Paul J. Lorona unless otherwise credited.

Those of you who have spent some time in the Stories section of my web site might understand why I like to refer to this image as He Is Here. Taken at local sunrise in the Owens Valley 19 April 2006. I awoke early (as usual), and took a short hike to look east-southeast from the southern Alabama Hills towards the north end of Owens Dry Lake. The sun is just cresting the southern Inyo Mountains. This is out of chronological sequence with the other images, but I couldn't help opening this album with this image.

The first evening and the first full day in the valley we had quite a bit of wind. I don't mean "rustle the leaves" type breezes either, I mean that howling type of wind that raises huge clouds of dust off the dry lake and causes the trailer to rock with the gusts. Conditions were such that the wind was coming out of the south, so of course that alkali dust filled the skies overhead and then proceeded to reduce the surface visibility to something less than a hundred yards for a while on Sunday. We hunkered down in our little trailer and waited it out. Not much picture-taking was accomplished until the winds abated mid-afternoon Sunday, at which time we took a short run as far as we could get up the Whitney Portal road. It was closed by a minor rock slide which we could have easily circumvented, but the rangers were patrolling the area and it seemed well advised to not try and get any farther.

The southern Inyo Mountains with the northern half of the Alabama Hills in the middle background. View looks due east from just below the first big switchback on the Whitney Portal Road. This well-composed image by my son Adam using his Canon Rebel XT.

This tree was poised on the brink, literally. What it's root system used to be buried in was laying in the Whitney Portal Road about twenty feet below.

Monday we ventured up highway 395 to Bishop to visit the ATM and see what was happening in the northern end of the valley.

The eastern Sierra skyline somewhere between Independence and Big Pine. The winds abated with the sunrise and the skies were clear in the Owens Valley. Image by my mom Gloria with her Canon A95.

True to tradition, the beast decided to act up again. However, this was an induced failure. I had asked a local Chevrolet dealer near our home in soCal (who isn't worthy of a link nor even a mention of their name) to service the power train of the beast about a month before we left, which included servicing the front axle and hubs, the transmission, the transfer case, and the rear axle. Well, it seems the service tech forgot that the posi-traction rear end in Chevy trucks requires a special additive to the gear oil. It's absence will cause the differential to grind away to a very early death in a very short period of time, typically less than a thousand miles. While up in Bishop, backing out of a parking stall, I heard and felt a distinct, unpleasant grinding coming from the rear end. Rolling our eyes at each other, The Fox and I both said "Millers" out loud, and we ran back down 395 to Lone Pine to visit our favorite friends at Miller's Tow. Jim runs a truck service shop there, and employs a mechanic there who knows Chevy trucks like the back of his own dirty paw, and he educated me in the proper way to set up a posi rear end on a Chevy truck. The dealer here in soCal apparently didn't do that, and the rear end was so loose that even though the gearing had bound up in the backing (the grinding I heard), no significant damage or wear was suffered. Some new 90 weight gear oil, the proper additive, a bit of adjusting, and we were back on the road.

Moral of the story: the steps you take to save time will usually cause you to waste much more time elsewhere. Had I serviced my own power train, I wouldn't have lost a day and a half of fun time in the eastern Sierra.

So with the beast temporarily laid up, the kids decided that bouldering was a Tuesday thing to do.

Dawn in the eastern Sierra. View looks directly at Mount Whitney, but in this view (from the east-southeast) Whitney itself is not visible, hidden by a ridge of slightly lower elevation in the foreground. The shadows on the slopes are cast by the Inyo Mountains across the Owens Valley to the east.

"Bouldering", as I understand it, is the art of climbing on large rocks unassisted by any mountaineering equipment like ropes. Here the more adventurous of our young folk begin a climb in the Alabama Hills. You'll meet these kids later in better images, so I won't dwell too much on who they are just yet. Their target is just west of "Movie Flat" in the heart of the Alabama Hills, just north of the Whitney Portal road. Image by Gloria Lorona using her Canon A95.

Here they are about a third of the way up. This image is with a 3X optical zoom and 2X digital zoom.

The objective. The two Jeeps at the base of the hill will give an idea of scale. The peak of this hill is 5718 feet MSL, a bit more than a thousand feet above the floor of the little canyon the Jeeps are parked in. The kids are somewhere in this picture, but I can't find them. Maybe you can? This view looks west from a much lower ridge.

Living the high life! Our young men celebrating victory over the rock on the summit of their mountain. Left to right: Will, John, Mike, Adam, all except Adam are students at Biola University. Image by Kelli using her Sony DSC-S60.

The view from the top. The city of Lone Pine is visible in the middle distance to the right. Behind and far below the large boulder on the left is the road we used to get into the canyon where the climbers started. That trail is almost one thousand one hundred feet below Kelli's viewpoint. "Movie Flat", home to dozens of Hollywood western movies, is spread out in the foreground below. Far to the east, the arid Inyo Mountains rise to their crest, some peaks in this view approaching ten thousand feet. The active mining community of Cerro Gordo is out there, up around nine thousand feet, about dead center in the distant mountains. Image by Kelli with her Sony DSC-S60.

Meanwhile, down below, the older canids are plotting strategies for tomorrow's assault on the Inyos. Your's truly gestures emphatically while the leader of the pack listens to his son's ramblings with an amused smile. Taken by The Fox using Adam's Canon Rebel XT (while Adam was up on the mountain and unable to tell her not to fool with his camera!).

And so, on the following day, we managed to get up earlier than usual, draw down the tire pressure in our respective rigs, and make our dusty way into the heart of the Inyos.

Destination: Mazourka Peak!