3/16 - 3/19/05 Stine Cove on Lake Isabella

3/16 - We launched from Panamint Springs shortly after 7 AM, gathering momentum on the remaining down grade for the climb ahead. A couple of miles into it, I stopped at the first turnout to let things cool down & take stock. Maybe giving up momentum was a bad idea; we could never really get going after that. As we started into the steep section in the third mile of the climb, eBoy just didn't seem to have the power we needed to sustain the remainder of this brutal 10 mile 10% grade. There seemed no hope of keeping the transmission temperature out of the red & I was not going to die on this grade again. I think the applicable words of wisdom are: Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. Or as the song says "you got to know when to fold'em."

I pulled onto the shoulder on a long straight run, reconnoitered the situation & decided I could back down to a wide spot & negotiate a u-turn. It was hairy, but there was little traffic & I could see for miles both ways, so we made it. There was no way I was going back over the pass to Lone Pine, so that left retracing our steps back down the Panamint Valley. I had a midmorning conference call to make, so we headed for Ridgecrest where I knew there would be cell service.

Then we had to decide where to go next; Red Rock was a good choice, I knew there would be space on a weekday morning & it was less than an hour away. But I had discovered in one of my books free camping available near Lake Isabella, only a little farther & well situated for our next leg up to the Diablos in a week. And that's how we came to be camped on a lake shore in the southernmost Sierra instead of at Death Valley.

The trip over Walker Pass on SR178 was uneventful & watching the transition from harsh desert, to Mojave, to Sierra kept the drive interesting. Lake Isabella is a good sized reservoir on the Kern River. Stine Cove is on the north side, an undeveloped recreation area within Sequoia National Forest; we have it entirely to ourselves.

A couple of fishing parties departed late in the afternoon. This evening we can look across the lake at the lights of South Lake & other villages strung along the opposite shore. This is looking like a good spot to spend the next 10 days.

3/17 - We're going to get some weather for the next few days, so we'll be on a tight watt watch. I won't be burning electrons at work over the weekend, so that will help. The wind blew strongly yesterday afternoon & was worse today, raising noticable white caps on the lake. A powerful gust also blew over our tripod, breaking one leg. Nuts! I was able to get back online later after mounting the satellite dish on the mast, but I'm not pleased about this wind.

I noted above that we are officially within Sequoia National Forest, but there is not a tree in sight on this side of the lake. We have different birds here than we've been seeing lately: gulls, pelicans, cormorants & mergansers. The latter two both seem to move about the lake in very large feeding flocks. One must assume there are indeed fish in the lake as the book noted. The ground cover over the poor rocky soil here includes a lot of dwarf lupine, some regular lupine & several clovers. When the wind dies down, the air carries a strong sweet perfume. I hope we get to smell it a lot more while we're here.

3/18 - With things winding up a little early on a cloudy Friday afternoon & our batteries already getting low, we made a run to Bakersfield to take care of a few items. We headed on around the north side of the lake, through the picturesque mountain town of Kernville, then on down the Kern River canyon. It's 40-odd miles to Bakersfield, but the last 15 or so are some of the toughest mountain driving I've seen: very narrow, very winding with many drop-offs to the river far below. I do not relish the idea of taking Gypsy down this road next week. I was astonished at how this narrow, deep canyon suddenly terminates in rolling orange groves at the Bakersfield city limits.

The weather forecast includes winter storm warnings for the southern Sierra over the next 24 hours. We may be forced to take refuge at the KOA across the lake if we don't get at least a ray of sun soon. We may also go back to Kernville tomorrow to escape the tedium of sitting out this storm. I'm interested in checking out the fly shop I saw there & talking about fishing the upper Kern, although that looks unlikely on this trip.

3/19 - There were sunny breaks in the storm today, so we are still OK in the watt department. We scoped out the fishing situation at the Kernville fly shop in the afternoon. The upper river is running high & turbid, but the guide said that below the dam they were having good results on nymphs. We'll just have to see how the weather plays out. We explored the first few miles of the upper Kern & found a number of unimproved Forest Service camping areas that may offer us some refuge from the wind. The cove is exposed to wind blowing unimpeeded up the canyon & across the lake. A deputy sheriff I talked to at the river campground said that the lake is often quite windy this time of year, but that the canyon is more protected. So we may be moving on up the Kern tomorrow to establish a new camp.

We did get some nice clouds & a pretty rainbow this afternoon during a calm interlude. We were also treated to a large flock of pelicans that seemed to enjoy the respite from the wind on their dinner patrol of the lake. A whimbrel, a rather large shorebird, made his way along the waterline, looking for snacks. We'll be checking the forecast tomorrow to see if we'll be able to continue boondocking or if we'll need to go for the grid for Monday.

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