4th of July in Mammoth Lakes

The 4th of July is a holiday in the US that fell on a Friday this year. Therefore we had a three-day-weekend which gave us the chance to go a little bit further away from home. We decided to go to Mammoth Lakes on the east side of the Sierra, on the 'other' side from Yosemite. Mammoth is better known as a ski resort, but the East Sierra is also beautiful for hiking.
We rented a vacation condo that we were able to use as our base for great day hiking trips. Our friends Jenny and John joined us or a day and a half and together we embarked on a fantastic 11-mile hiking trip in the John Muir Wilderness.



The hike started at already 9,000 feet elevation and brought us close to 11,000 feet. As you can imagine, the views are unbelievable and the elevation gets the heart rate going :-)
We hiked through some forest first with a nice waterfall (see picture) and then followed the trail along huge rock formations and different lakes to our destination Duck Lake. The color of the water was amazing and the lake was so huge; just a perfect location with the mountains surrounding the water.


The next day, we took another hike on the Little Lakes Valley trail that we had been snowshoeing on a couple years earlier during winter time. It is very interesting to hike the same trail in different seasonal conditions. We passed by about 6 lakes, one more beautiful than the other.