Paul sent me this:
Inyo County Road Conditions
Road Status Comments
------------------ ------ -----------------------
Whitney Portal Rd Open
Onion Valley Rd Open
Horseshoe Meadow Rd Closed Estimated to open April 24th.
Haiwee Pass Rd OPEN Flood damage
Foothill Rd OPEN
Division Creek Rd OPEN
Mazourka Cn. Rd OPEN Side roads damaged by floods.
N Saline Valley Rd OPEN
As memory serves this is only one day earlier than last year for Horseshoe Meadow Road.
Apparently it's not opening after all, due to weather.
Bummer.....I was going to drive up and do some day hiking this weekend. I wonder when the road will be open then, next week....Monday, Tuesday?
Last year, I went into the backcountry, over Trail Pass on May4th, down to the Kern for 7 days.....
paul
anyword if the road might open this week and did the area get a lot of snow? I would like to get out to the cotton wood lakes area for a night or 2.
The road conditions web page from Inyo N.F. is here:
http://www.fs.usda.gov/detailfull/inyo/recreation/?cid=stelprdb5192379It shows Horseshoe Meadows road still closed, but their update date is Apr 24. Note they also give the Inyo County road dept phone number, so you could call them and find out.
From the web cam views, the storm does not appear to have dropped any snow on the east side, so I would expect the road to open up very soon.
I called and they said its going to be a couple more weeks because there are doing some repairs to the road.
Horseshoe Meadow Road is now Open Folks ! gst
So anyone get out up there? I was thinking of doing cottonwood lakes over army pass and loop back around on the pct and cottonwood pass maybee next weekend but I see the forecast has 20% chance of snow all week. Anyways would these passes still hold much snow that I would need ice ax and crampons? Which is fine. I've only been up old army pass last year in aug so not familiar with the rest if the trail.