#lone pine

[lisselundin]

Alabama Hills

[chlobody]

TREE OF LIFE

[frenchcurious]

La Maison Oyler, conçue par Richard Neutra en 1959 à Lone Pine, en Californie pour Richard Oyler. Photo : Chris Mottalini. - source MCM Daily.

[filmap]

Yellow Sky William A. Wellman. 1948

Rocks Unnamed Road, Lone Pine, CA 93545, USA See in map

See in imdb

[oldshowbiz]

1865-1866.

Genocide in Owens Valley.

[carsonfilm]

Rikuzentakata touring

[caldrive]

Sunrise, Mt Whitney, from Lone Pine, California.

[gravelish]

Alabama Hills (Lone Pine CA)

1 April 2023

After two weeks in San Francisco, I’m on the road again, on my way to Arizona. I’ve got some ideas for rides along the way and this was one of them. Fortunately the weather cooperated, providing me a sunny, clear afternoon with the temperature in the low 60s.

Lone Pine is in the Owens Valley, immediately east of the southern Sierras and Mount Whitney (which at 14,500’ is the highest point in the lower 48, although it’s only barely higher than Mount Rainier in Washington and Mount Elbert in Colorado). The Alabama Hills are weathered granitic knobs that protrude from the lower portion of the alluvial fans, just west of town, and have been the backdrop for many old western movies and TV shows.

My ride climbed through the hills on Tuttle Creek Road and returned to Lone Pine on the main Whitney Portal Road. My two side trips were very different. The first was a long straight climb on Horseshoe Meadows Road to the gate that marks its current closure (a couple of miles before the first big switchbacks and probably where I would have begun seeing snow). The turnaround was right where the road reached the top of the alluvial fan and began climbing the mountains themselves.

The second detour, but also the main reason for the ride, was riding out and back on Movie Road through the main part of the Alabama Hills. It was packed with tourists (only a few others were on bikes). I think the combination of the granitic soils (grus) and some recent road grading were responsible for Movie Road being awfully sandy in places and difficult to ride. It was closed to cars just a couple miles in, apparently due to some recent washouts (yup, it’s been raining hard everywhere in California this winter), but I continued for a ways before turning around. It would have been fun to explore more of the side roads, but the sand was deep and loose and I would have been walking the bike.

[lizablaise]

came down with a cold exactly 1 year later 😭

low quality outtakes from lone pine and mount whitney this week (i can’t find my cable)

[capturingthemachine]

Rivian R1T in Lone Pine, CA

[lisselundin]

Alabama Hills

[califactsijustmadeup]

Lone Pine is famous for being the shooting of loads of western movies as well as some of the Tremors films and the Afghanistan scenes in Iron Man. Be careful out on the sands though; the worms in Tremors were local wildlife that invaded the set and the crew had to write a new script around them.

[filmap]

Bad Day at Black Rock John Sturges. 1955

Desert Horseshoe Meadows Rd, Lone Pine, CA 93545, USA See in map

See in imdb

[seandugganphoto]

Diana camera contact sheet, Sept. 2011 Death Valley & Lone Pine, California.

I've always appreciated the image-to-image flow and story that can be found in contact sheets from film negatives. In addition to scans of individual frames, I also create scans to make a contact sheet of the entire roll. I've always enjoyed seeing the physical record of all the images made on a particular roll. I was visiting folders in my Lightroom Classic catalog today that I've not seen for a while and this is one of the images I encountered again after a long time.

[caldrive]

Another Lone Pine sunrise, Lone Pine, California (the view from the understatedly good Best Western Frontier Motel on US 395 (and no, they don't pay me to say that)).

[corvidist]

A few more Sierra Nevada photos