June Lake Loop — the Eastern Sierra Secret (CA)

Welcome to the June Lake Loop — sixteen miles that locals will tell you, quietly, is the most beautiful short drive in the Eastern Sierra. I'm Ranger Quinn, your guide and navigator. There's a second voice riding with…

And that's the loop — you're coming back into June Lake Junction, where One Fifty-Eight returns you to Highway Three Ninety-Five. Left takes you north toward Mono Lake, Lee Vining and the Tioga Road into Yosemite; rig…

Coming up on the left is the turnoff for Oh! Ridge — and yes, that is its real, official name, punctuation included. It's named for what people say when they come over the rise and the view hits them: June Lake spread…

Slow down through the village — it's compact, people cross this road with fishing rods and ice cream, and everything worth stopping for is packed into about four blocks. June Lake calls itself the Switzerland of Cali…

Here in the village, watch for Gull Lake Road at the community-center corner — the little street that turns off toward the lake. That's the turn-in for the lakeshore walk we've built into this tour. Follow it past the…

Welcome to the easy one — the loop around Gull Lake. First, let's get you pointed the right way, because there are no arrows out here. From the parking lot, walk EAST along the top of the lot — that's the end nearest…

There's the water — and the little marina along this stretch is the beating heart of Gull Lake. Keep it on your right and let me teach you to read the lake like the locals do. Those dimples far out — that's trout sip…

And that's the Gull Lake loop — well done, all of you. At the junction just ahead, bear RIGHT, away from the water, and the short path brings you up past the tennis courts to the parking lot where you started — about…

The path threads the edge of the Gull Lake campground along here — you're walking a stretch of quiet campground lane for a few minutes, so share it politely; the campers expect walkers, and half of them will say good…

The shore pinches in along here and the water comes up close and clear — stand still a moment and look straight down off the path. This shallow margin is the lake's pantry: caddisfly cases like little gravel sleeping…

Along this south edge the lake goes shallow and reedy, and that makes it the nursery ward — watch the margins and you'll see fry scattering ahead of your shadow, and in the evenings the surface out there dimples with…

This corner is the quiet side — the road and the town are across the water now, the campground sounds are a shore away, and this is where the wildlife actually happens. Watch the sky over the lake. Osprey work Gull L…

Walk easy on this stretch, because this one deserves an unhurried telling — and I tell it careful, because the people it belongs to are still here, still in this basin, and still telling it better than I ever will. L…

The white-barked trees closing in around the path are quaking aspen, and this grove is the reason to time this walk for late September if you possibly can — the whole west shore goes gold at once, and the reflection d…

And here's the far southwestern corner of the lake — the halfway mark, and the best long view of the walk. Look back across the water: the marina and the town sit tucked against the far shore with Reversed Peak rising…

Well now. I'm Boone — Boone Merrick — and I tell the stories on this road, the ones that don't fit on the historical markers. And the first one I've got for you is about that big timbered inn you just passed in the vi…

The ski runs carved into the mountainside above you are June Mountain — the small, stubborn, beloved little sibling of the giant resorts, and the reason this town has a winter at all. The story is a good one. In nine…

While the road runs quiet here, let me give you the loop by season, because this is four different drives wearing the same number. FALL is the headliner. Late September through mid-October the aspen go off like a slo…

The creek threading the willows beside the road here is doing something no other stream on this entire side of the Sierra does: it is flowing TOWARD the mountains. Look at the water — it's running west, at the peaks,…

Since Boone and I have you between lakes, let me give you the honest hiker's guide to this loop, because the trailheads are coming up fast and they are absolutely not all the same difficulty. The gentle one is the Gu…

This is Silver Lake, and the cluster of white cabins and the little cafe beside the road is one of the oldest continuously running resorts in the Eastern Sierra — going since nineteen sixteen. It began as Carson's Ca…

The parking area here is the Rush Creek Trailhead — the doorway to the high lakes above: Agnew, Gem, and on into the Ansel Adams Wilderness. It's one of the great backpacking gateways of the Sierra, and even as a day…

Look up at that line on the canyon wall one more time, because I want you to understand what you're looking at. That is what it took to bring electric light to this corner of California, and it was built by men who ha…

A word about the fishing, because you're driving through some of the most storied trout water in California, and the loop takes it seriously in a way that's easy to miss from the road. All four lakes hold fish — rain…

The biggest lake of the loop opens up ahead — Grant Lake, nearly a thousand acres when it's full — and you'll notice immediately that it doesn't look like the others. No pines crowding the shore, no cabins: open sageb…

Notice how completely the country has changed — pines gone, cabins gone, just sagebrush rolling down to the water and the smell, if your windows are open, of sun on resin. This high sage is its own world, and it's wor…

Up ahead on the left, watch for the signed dirt road to Parker Lake — that's the detour I promised back at the trail briefing. It's about two and a half miles of graded dirt, fine for most cars driven gently, to a sma…

This is the best story on this road, and it's true, and I'd tell it slower if I could. You heard Quinn: since nineteen forty-one, the creek below Grant Lake dam — Rush Creek, the same water those Bodie men built thei…

Out to the east as the loop straightens out, that chain of pale, symmetrical domes marching north is the Mono Craters — and they are, by most reckonings, the youngest mountain range in North America. The most recent o…

And here's the north junction — the loop is done, and One Fifty-Eight hands you back to Highway Three Ninety-Five. Left, and ten minutes north, is Mono Lake itself — those limestone tufa towers standing out of the wat…

Welcome to the June Lake Loop — sixteen miles that locals will tell you, quietly, is the most beautiful short drive in the Eastern Sierra. I'm Ranger Quinn, your guide and navigator, and there's a second voice riding…