Shortly after dawn on Thursday, I drove my car up a long, steep hill outside Bishop and climbed through tall desert brush toward the towering peaks of the Eastern Sierra. For about 15 miles, the land and almost everything on it was the same color: a dull sandy gray.
But at about 8,000 feet, I rounded a curve on South Lake Road and the world in front of my windshield exploded into vivid yellow and gold.
At that altitude, the aspen and willow forests were radiant with fall color, filling the stream beds and high mountain slopes with a riot of glorious hues seen here once a year and only for about a year. week.
The changing of fall leaves is peaking in the Inyo National Forest near Bishop.
Colors in the Eastern Sierra peak first at high elevations, and the show goes downhill as fall progresses. That means there's still time to see the spectacle at lower elevations. South Lake Tahoe and Convict Lake near Mammoth look promising this week.
In Southern California, leaves around Mount Baldy and Big Bear Lake typically peak between mid-October and early November.
A reliable guide with maps and suggested viewing locations can be found at California Fall Color.
Leaf snobs quickly realize that the West Coast has nothing close to the variety of colors that appear this time of year in New England. And they are right. I still remember a trip from Montreal to Connecticut one October weekend many years ago, watching my otherwise talkative college roommate, who had grown up in British Columbia, look out the passenger window in stunned silence as we passed the hillsides covered in fiery shades of red. , orange and yellow.
But those were just hills; Vermont's highest peak is just over 4,000 feet. While the eastern US offers a resplendent autumn palette, the astonishing scale and grandeur of the Sierra Nevada creates its own impressive annual spectacle.
The scale and grandeur of the Sierra Nevada creates a stunning spectacle of autumn leaves.
The road I took from Bishop ends at 9,868 feet, at South Lake, which serves as the backdrop to a natural amphitheater surrounded on three sides by towering granite peaks: Hurd Peak at 12,237 feet; Cloudripper at 13,535 feet; and Mount Agassiz at 13,899.
Together they form one of the most impressive views you can reach by car in California.
Climbing those formidable peaks should be left to people with technical mountaineering skills, as demonstrated once again last month when the Inyo County Sheriff's Department had to rescue three ill-equipped and ill-prepared hikers from Cloudripper. It took the search and rescue team more than five hours to climb up to the stranded group with ropes and harnesses and another six and a half hours to safely lower them down.
But for visitors who just want to enjoy the stunning foliage, Bishop Pass offers a well-maintained and easily accessible hiking trail. It begins at South Lake and runs nearly six miles along a chain of pristine alpine lakes, ending at a 12,000-foot ridge that marks the boundary between the eastern and western slopes of the Sierra.
An angler casts his line into Bishop Creek near South Lake in the Inyo National Forest.
I set out to do about half the distance as a 10K run, but I stopped so often to take photos of the magnificent scenery and chat with other foliage-watchers that the workout I expected to take just under an hour turned into a two and a half hour walk. .
Along the way, I met retirees from Bakersfield and Thousand Oaks, technicians from the Bay Area, and a couple in their 60s from Japan. Apparently, word of the majesty of autumn in this remote mountain paradise has spread far and wide.
If you go: The trip to Bishop from downtown Los Angeles is approximately 270 miles and generally takes about five hours. From there, it's another 20 miles uphill to South Lake, where the Bishop Pass Trail begins. Temperatures at that altitude range from the 60s in the afternoon to the 40s at night this time of year, so pack some layers, along with water and snacks for the trail.
