photoleif said:
<minor hijack> how's the weather in that area (sequoia, yosemite, king's canyon) in mid to late sept? any fall color or is the flora such that fall color really isn't a factor? </minor hijack>
Weather is usually pretty nice.
My experience with Yosemite and north is that the color actually depends on the year. If you are looking for fall color, later (October)is usually better.
To get back on thread,
I headed up to Shaver Lake on early Sunday morning, and decided to take the road until it ended. 20 miles past Shaver we hit Huntington Lake where the road split off with warnings about unmaintained road ahead, but open.
Shortly thereafter the road stayed paved, but was almost a 4wd road. Immediately we saw a Bronco that had been parked a while(smashed windshield).
There was a surprisingly large amount of traffic. The biggest hazard was the blind corners and the narrowness of the road. At one point, there must have been a group event because there was a van that had stalled blocking the roadway, with a large group that had decided to turn the roadblock into a picnic. When they finally moved the van to the side of the road, we realized that the picnicers had parked themselves blocking the road. It took a while, but they finally moved out of the way.
This was at 9k' with melting snow on the ground and a slight rain. Although it was 100+ in the valley, it was ~mid-70s up there.
Once we got past the traffic(it was Sunday afternoon, so I think everyone was beelining for home) we had a chance to enjoy the scenery. It was a long meandering road(20 miles is a long way to go at 15 mph). Narrow and in places really made you wonder at how much work went into it. Obviously the shelf it was on had been blasted out in some parts.
As we got up to Mono Hot Springs, there was a tow service flatbed with a car on it coming the other way(can you say $$$$ tow, hopefully they had AAA).
The road continued to climb up through the boulder fields, to give some truly amazing views.
We got up to Edison, which had some amazing views of the mountains. Although we were fairly close to Mammoth(on the map at least), there was to way to get there, except by backpack.
On the way down we went through rain, and had a magnificent view of Huntington Lake.
