If you travel to Lone Pine Lake above the Whitney Portal on a quiet day, you just might catch a glimpse of the Lone Pine Lake Monster. The monster looks like a huge brown snake and is nearly 90 feet long. It has ears that stick out from the side of its skinny head and a mouth big enough to eat a man. According to some, it has small legs and it kind of scurries when it ventures out on land. But in the water - watch out! It can swim faster than a horse can gallop - makes a mile a minute on a good day. Sometimes the monster likes to sneak up on unwary hikers standing at the banks and blows water at them. The ones it doesn't carry off to eat, that is.
I heard Versatile Fred spotted the monster early one evening as he was walking along the lake. He tried to shoot it with his rifle. Versatile Fred is a crack shot, but not one of his bullets touched that monster. It scared the heck out of him and he high tailed it home faster than you can say RoguePhotonic. Left his rifle behind him and claimed the monster ate it.
Sometimes, when the monster has been quiet for a while, people start saying it is gone for good. Some folks even dredge up that old tale that says how Bob West heard about the Lone Pine Lake monster and bet some cowpokes that he could wrestle that monster until it said uncle. According to them folks, the fight lasted for days and created a hurricane around Lone Pine Lake. Finally, Bob flung that there monster over his shoulder and it flew so far it went plumb around the world and landed in Loch Ness, where it lives to this day.
Course, we know better than that. The Lone Pine Lake Monster is just hibernating-like. Keep your eyes open at dusk and maybe you'll see it come out to feed. Just be careful walking beside the banks of the lake, or you might be its next meal!
