LONE PINE, CALIF.—Entering town, things feel friendly enough, a sign giving a warm welcome and a “howdy” to those, like me, cruising down U.S. Route 395. But soon enough, things get a little more extreme. Leaving the main highway, I push the pedal down on my rented red Nissan Pathfinder — which I immediately nicknamed “Big Red” after picking it up — roaring higher and higher, past the famous Alabama Hills, mountains hemming me in both behind and before.
Crossing into an active bear area — so marked by a big yellow sign — I enter the first switchbacks aware of additional hazards, namely steep grades and falling rock. I can feel Big Red begin to strain as we climb higher and higher, into ever-thinner air, the narrow road clinging to a slim bit of purchase before falling dramatically, straightaway into the sweep of the valley below.
Continuing deeper into a cleft in the rock, I finally arrive at the Mount Whitney Trailhead. Parking the car, I tighten my shoelaces and make my way to the trail, digging in as I proceed around the first curve — huffing and puffing just a few metres in, already out of breath.
I’m driving south on the 395, a highway that winds through some of the most pristine wilderness in the nation on the quiet side of California, a two-laner in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. I’m here to explore everything along the way, from Lake Tahoe to the Mojave Desert, including Mount Whitney — the tallest peak in the continental United States — to Death Valley, the lowest place in North America.
But I have absolutely no intention of climbing to Whitney’s snow-capped, 4,421-metre summit. Scrambling back down the path, whose base already sits at 2,553 metres, I pop into a nearby log cabin store and chat with Doug Thompson, who has worked there for 30 years and has seen everything.
“For a lot of people, they make this their first hike, and it’s a mystery to me why they think they can do it. Here, we have a combination of high altitude and extreme weather conditions; they’re just not prepared,” he says, noting that people often arrive on both ends of the spectrum — either with too much stuff, or not enough.
As if on cue, an out-of-shape middle-aged man with a distinct New England accent arrives in a droopy Tilley hat and pants that look like they would have fit two decades ago. He tells Thompson that he left his brother on the trail and just couldn’t hack it, and inquires about campsites and local water sources.
As the door bangs shut, Thompson turns to me. “I call that the ‘Saturday night special,’ ” he says with a smirk. “Multiply that by 800 — that’s what we see here, every week.”
Thompson directs me to a place a little more my pace — a big rock around the corner where Humphrey Bogart’s character died in the movie High Sierra. I walk over, snap a photo of the unusually large stone and the spot where Bogey breathed his last, then drive back down the mountain for a more complete movie tour.
Pivoting from alpine glory to desert desolation, to charming, tiny towns, my entire drive down the 395 feels like a tour through a movie set.
In Tahoe, my first stop along the way, I take the opportunity for a walk in the woods, leaving the massive main lake (and most of the crowds) behind for a smaller one called Fallen Leaf Lake, winding among the lodge pole pines to a hidden beach along Cathedral Meadows Trail.
Further down the road, in Mammoth Lakes, I spot towering waterfalls and tour the remarkable Gallery at Twin Lakes, built in 1934 as a studio by painter Stephen H. Willard, a place where current owners Sue and Robert Joki still live in the summer months (you’re free to roam everywhere, including their bedroom, to view the idyllic works of art).
And at Bodie, I encounter the true opportunistic spirit of the west. Booming from 1877 to 1881, this gold rush town was once home to 10,000 hopeful souls, as well as nine mills, 200 restaurants, 60 saloons, a horse racetrack — but no church (one was added, almost as an afterthought, in 1882).
“Most of the gunfights took place up in the Red Light District,” ranger Catherine Jones says, pointing north. “It was a pretty wild place.”
Now a California State Park, Jones explains that Bodie is maintained in a state of “arrested decay” — they do enough to keep the structures standing, but leave everything else as it was found when the town passed into state hands in 1962. Consequently, a stroll here is a singularly eerie experience, the whole place feeling bit post-apocalyptic, in all the best ways — as though everybody picked up and left at the same time. In one home, the place settings remain on the table, collecting dust. In one saloon, the roulette wheel remains, unspun for decades.
Like most of those 19th-century miners and prospectors, I leave town empty-handed, tracking south, to the tiny town of Lone Pine — population 2,035. Here, I learn that the surrounding area has been a set for dozens of films dating back to the dawn of mass-market motion pictures, and it’s now home to the impressive Museum of Western Film History.
Taking a guided tour with curator Catherine Kravitz, she shows me rare Technicolor movie cameras and 90-year-old movie posters, and quietly shares that Quentin Tarantino loved this area so much that, after shooting parts of Django Unchained here, he came back to hang out at the museum on his birthday.
“He’s very intense,” she says, a serious look on her face.
After that, Inyo County Film Commissioner Chris Langley takes me out in his SUV into the iconic Alabama Hills, where filmmakers have made some 400 movies — John Wayne alone starred in 12 of them.
“It’s a huge area of land with nothing on it. No telephone poles. No Wal-Marts,” Langely explains as we climb into the distinctive piles of monzogranite boulders, stopping to see shooting locations for everything from The Lone Ranger to Ironman to How the West Was Won.
And, the light fading, I drive west, in the direction of my ultimate destination — Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America, deep inside Death Valley National Park.
Less than three hours from the base of Mount Whitney, I overnight at Stovepipe Wells, a bastion of motel civilization amid one of America’s loneliest landscapes, an area where pioneers once perished by the dozen while stabbing westward on wagon trains (inspiring its name).
The next morning, I descend into the national park, green road signs marking my steady decline, arriving at a parking lot crammed with cars and campers, everyone here to snap a photo with a simple wooden sign declaring its lowly elevation, 282 feet (86 metres) below sea level.
I tarry for a few minutes, viewing the original Badwater Pool (so named by a surveyor whose mule refused to drink the salty water) and walking out on the salt flats for a few minutes, before posing for my own photo by the elevation sign. And then it’s back to behind the wheel, steering Big Red, headed for higher places, nothing left but to drive uphill.
Tim Johnson was a guest of Visit California, which didn’t review or approve this article.
When you go:
Get there: Air Canada provides regular flights to the top of the 395 in Lake Tahoe with the help of their Star Alliance partner, United Airlines — the closest connection is to fly to Reno, Nev., via Denver.
Stay: A welcome respite from your long days on the road, Double Eagle Resort and Spa (doubleeagle.com) sits on a quiet pond at the back of a quiet canyon, south of Bodie and north of Mammoth Lakes. Relax or take a short trip to explore the nearby “tufa towers,” calcium carbonate spires that rise out of million-year-old Mono Lake, home to some two million birds.
Eat: In Mammoth Lakes, the Mammoth Brewing Co. has been serving up microbrewed mugs since 1995. Take a pint and wash down some truly exceptional pub grub, such as goat cheese flatbread and a burger.
Shop: While you’re welcome to walk in and browse (or hang around in the backyard with a picnic lunch during the summer months, especially when they have a band playing), you can also pick up some lovely prints and original works at the Gallery at Twin Lakes (thegalleryattwinlakes.com) near Mammoth.
Do your research: visitcalifornia.com