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Birthday weekend, desert and snow

Celebrating Sean’s and my May birthdays.

May 19, 2023

Distance26.5 MiAscent11,491 FtTime6h 5mActivityHikingDifficultyExpert

Background

The US-395 corridor on the east side of the Sierra is what makes a weekend like this work: Death Valley’s desert and Mammoth’s snow are only a few hours apart over the mountains, so you can wheel the dunes one day and ski the next. Spring is the overlap, when the desert’s still cool and the high country still holds snow.

The setup

A May birthday weekend in the Eastern Sierra catches the best overlap of the year: Mammoth often still has spring skiing up high while the desert and lower trails have fully opened up, so you can stack a ski day and a desert day back to back without much driving.