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For 45 minutes drive from Mammoth and there we came to the Yosemite national park east entrance. A small parking next to the gate was the trail head to the Gaylor lakes and Granite lakes. It starts at 9900 feet.
The beginning of the trail was steep. After getting up to the ridge, around 10600 feet ,  the beautiful view of the Gaylor lake shows up when looking down in the valley. The view of  snow mountains in the far back are amazing too.
Passing Gaylor lake, it’s a easy walk to the upper Gaylor lake then to the miner’s shack, except a part on a snow field and attack of hundreds of mosquitos. I tried to use hood and hat to protect my face but still got a few bites. They even bit through my long sleeve jacket on my shoulder. This year the snow melt later than usual and it seems the mosquito season is delayed too. It’s wise to have some bug nets and bug spray with you. On the way back, i took some nice photos of some wild flower and the granite lake.
The hike was totally 5 miles. Came back to the trail head, we decided to drive a little bit more into the Yosemite. Olmstedt point was 8 miles away. From there view of Half dome is pretty clear. It’s obviously a popular spot of photo shooting.
Tenaya lake is a huge lake on the way to the Olmstede point. It is very beautiful but just not so quiet because of the popularity.
Dinner was at the lodge, including sauteed chicken, boiled corn and veg soup. It was delicious.

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Left LA 6am on Friday and arrived Mammoth around noon as planed.
Drove up lake George,  there is a short hike to Barrett lake and T.J. Lake, just good for the first day warm up hike.
Altitude is one important thing can’t be ignored hiking in high sierra mountains. The Mammoth town where we stayed is 8000 feet high, and lake George is above 9000 feet elevation already. As soon as walking up little bit, my heart started beating much faster. I was glad I did some hiking in Baldy last weekend.
This was only a small hike for the body to get adjusted to the  altitude, but I’ve got a few nice photos of the lakes and some wild flowers next to a creek.
Dinner at the lodge,  had fried rice and chicken Veg soup.

[singlepic id=99 w=320 h=240 float=left]This was the first time hiking at Mt. Baldy in the mid summer. At the ski hub, i was surprised to see wild flowers were blooming like in the spring.
The ski hub trail is a pretty steep one. It’s about 7 miles round trip with 3800 feet elevation gain. Even it is short, it took us 4 hours to go up and 3 hours to come down.

[singlepic id=96 w=320 h=240 float=left]Crystal lake area used to be a popular recreation resort for hiking, camping and boating. After the big fire 3 years ago in Los Angeles, some of the road got damaged and this area was closed for a few years. Finally it’s partly reopened again.

The view of beautiful lake between the mountains on the way to the crystal lake trail was amazing. I didn’t expect to see so much water in L.A. area. San Gabriel river east fork and west fork cross here. We hiked in the east fork last year to the bridge to nowehere.

During May, we hiked 3 trails in Crystal Lake area.
Windy Gap trail
The elevation was already very high where the trail starts, it was hard for me to walk fast. The trail was made even difficult to walk since many burned trees fell down and blocked the trail at many spots. The Windy gap was quite windy. Still some snow patches left in the shade.

Smith mountain
It was a beautiful trail with many wild flowers all the way up. but at the very end, there’s a very steep part to the peak, 0.5 miles with 800 feet escalation. Some part requires both hands to climb a little bit. After hiking this trail, my ankles were very sour for a few days.

Winston peak
[singlepic id=95 w=320 h=240 float=left]Because of the road closed for that day’s maintenance, we hiked 8 miles, 4 miles longer than our plan. It was my first time to see the snow plant. And there were so many of them. They look like red flower of some plant. But when you look closer, they don’t have any green leaves or stems.
The last part to the peak didn’t have any used trail. Even it was not very steep, probably with the escalation, I felt pretty tired.

It was 2 years ago we hiked up Hongdo Canyon located in Topanga Canyon. I always remember how beautiful it was. Most part of the trail were shaded by trees. And at the point going up to the overlook, the ocean view showed up all of sudden and gave a great surprise.

I wanted to hike there again. We decided to go there on Saturday morning.
After we walked out of the canyon, instead of go up the overlook trail again, this time we climbed up a off road trail which was so steep that needed to use both hands. We saw some spiky bushes with beautiful pink wild flowers that we’ve never seen before. Fortunatelly there’s another way going onto overloook trail so we didn’t to go down the same place.

We had 8 mile 2000 ft escalation up.