Backpacking Among the Big Pine Lakes
A single day of hiking can place you among the seven varied, and dazzlingly beautiful Big Pine Lakes. The lakes are scattered along a forested, 2-mile alpine valley nestled against the eastern face the Sierra Nevada's Inconsolable Range - a jagged ridge of 13,000-foot peaks.
Big Pine Lakes makes a perfect weekend journey, or to allow time to explore all the lakes and venture up some of the side-canyons, plan on 4 or 5 days. The steep, 4.8-mile hike from road's end takes you up the North Fork of Big Pine Creek, past waterfalls, wildflowers, and an historic stone cabin to First Lake. The lakes have an emerald color caused by the glacial silt washed down from surrounding peaks.
First Lake and Temple Crag
Big Pine Lakes - Key Facts
Location: John Muir Wilderness, Inyo County, 10 miles west of Big Pine, 15 miles south of Bishop.
Trailhead: Big Pine Creek, elevation 7,660 feet
First Lake elevation: 9,957 feet
Elevation Gain: 2,297 feet
Hiking Distance: 4.8 miles to First Lake, 6.9 miles to Fourth Lake
Best seasons: Mid-summer to fall
Campsites: Fourth Lake is most popular, but campsites are found by most lakes.
Artist Robert Clunie
Beginning in the late 1920s, plein air artist Robert Clunie spent summers camped around Fourth and Fifth of the Big Pine Lakes. Just before the beginning of the Great Depression, Clunie hired a mule packer to transport him and his painting gear to Fourth and Fifth Lakes above the Upper Glacier Lodge in Big Pine Canyon.
For the next fifty years he returned every summer to spend two months painting in his beloved mountains. His paintings of the lakes and peaks of the area only gained popularity after his death in 1985.
