We set our hopes high on Iva Bell Hot Springs in the Fish Creek Valley behind Mammoth for a nice place to spend New Years. The mountain was clear of snow (except for snowmaking) and we had it on good authority that there should be little to no snow in the backcountry. However, the road to the usual trailhead was closed for the season and the other common route would have taken longer than a day to reach the springs. Not to be deterred, I discovered a reasonable cross-country route linking two trail systems while Google Earthing. After importing key points into my GPS, we were good to go. We had snowshoes, but decided against bringing them as we expected all south facing slopes to be free of snow. The town of Mammoth Lakes only saw one dump of several inches of snow about a month before. We were warned that since that dump there had been exceedingly high winds that had downed many trees.We were kindly dropped off at Twin Lakes and set off along the icy bike path, across the bridge between the lakes, through the campground and up the steep hill to a road we could take back to the paved road. We reached Horseshoe Lake in little time but were quickly slowed by the snow conditions. Snow had melted around many trees, but between them the soft snow could be as deep as our calves or knees. Initially we took a stepping stone like approach, wading from tree to tree on the sunnier south side of ridges. Before long we just worked our way in as straight a line as we could, using my GPS to navigate. We crossed Mammoth Pass and rather than being free of snow, we found a greater excess. The trip was already evolving in our mind as I could see our pace not quite adding up to our goal.
The backcountry had been completely ravished by the wind storm unlike I had ever seen before. In places 50% of the trees were down. Between the snow and trail markers on downed trees, the trails were nearly impossible to follow and we ended up hiking almost the entire way across country. Trees were stacked 3 high across trails in places. I can't comprehend how much effort it is going to take to re-open these trails. Despite trying to improve our pace, we were slowed by the deteriorating trail conditions. Occasionally I found a trail sign, which was a surprising reminder that we were still more-or-less following a trail.
We had lunch at picturesque spot on the edge of Crater Meadow (noting it would be a reasonable campspot) and chose a circuitous cross country route towards the PCT. At about 2:30pm, we called it- there was no sign of conditions improving, even with a decrease in elevation, it would take us more than a day to reach the hot springs, and with snow my route would potentially be unsafe. We returned to the meadow and set up camp with the plan of hiking back out the following day. I hiked to the top of the cinder cone nearby for sunset- great views of the surrounding valleys and the Minarets. Going down the cinder cone was much more enjoyable.
We had a superb morning once the sun crested the mountains and baked our tent. We enjoyed the warm, lazy, bug-free morning as long as we could, and then reluctantly hiked back. With a better handle on the route and determined to get back, we made it back to Twin Lakes in just under 3 hours. We stopped at Lake McLeod on the way back to play on the ice.
We caught the last shuttle bus to town and eventually found ourselves feasting on a tasty bacon-drenched pizza at Nik-N-Willies in town. Our New Years was suitably mellow and we were both asleep by 11pm. I'd love to give this particular route another shot sometime. Although realistically it might be several years before I get back and the trails have recovered.
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