Little Lakes Valley Hiking

Little Lakes Valley Hiking

Long Lake

Last weekend, August 17, 2013, we went hiking to Little Lakes Valley.  This is really nice area for family hiking.

Little Lakes Valley is located a little northern part of Bishop CA near CA395.  It is about 250mils away, 5~6 hours drive from San Francisco Bay area.  We drove Yosemite National park along CA120.  Yosemite itself is really beautiful nice area.  But it was really crowed in summer time.

In June this year, one of my friend visited Little Lakes Valley and she posted really beautiful photos to Facebook.   That is why I really wanted to visit there as well.  This year our family had been very busy for house hunting.  Due to very crazy housing market, we needed to look at open houses almost all weekend since April.  We did not have no time to go hiking this early summer.

Finally,  our offer was accepted mid July and we were getting some time to go camping and hiking.



Location

About 25 miles before Bishop from north side of CA395, Little Lakes Valley is located along Rock Creek Rd from CA395.  The end of the road is called Mosquito Flat where is the trail head of this hiking trail.  The first day we arrived there around 11am.  The parking lot was full and no space to park at the end of the load.
People need to be back a few miles to park their car.  No street parking is allowed due to narrow road.

 Trail head

So that, we gave up to go hiking on the first day and went back to Rock Creek Lake to spend the rest of the day.  Rock Creek Lake is really nice place for kids.  There is a nice creek near parking lot.  Also, nice camp sites near creek and the lake.  Many people were fishing and caught some fish.  Probably reserving a camp site earlier and stay that camp site would be really nice!

 Beautiful sky from Rock Creek Lake

The next morning, we got up earlier and went to the trail head around 8am.  We could park a nice spots at the end of the road.  The trail head elevation is about 3000m from sea level.  (about 9,000FT).  The trail is slowly getting elevation to about 3400m at Morgan Pass.  Due to a little high altitude, we probably need to pay attention for high altitude sickness, especially kids.

 Nice view near trail head!

First Lake, Mack Lake

Marsh Lake

Heart Lake

Long Lake

Around tree line

 

West side from Morgan Pass

East side from Morgan Pass

Along the trail, there are many small lakes and we really enjoyed nice view almost everywhere on the trail.  We have some little kids and they looked they had high altitude sickness, therefore we decided to turn back from Morgan Pass.  The trail is continue to the east side and some of people continue hiking there.

Round trip to Morgan Pass is about 7.5 miles (12km), about 5 hours hiking with kids.  

This is really nice trail, I strongly recommend to the other people!

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