Fear and Loathing in the Lower Owens
When my buddy told me he had booked us the shittiest room this side of the Eastern Sierras, I was a bit curious. And sure enough, the list of amenities should've included:
Rusty death stairs
Phone book but no phone
A 20 foot clothing rod, longer than the one at my place (With 2 clothes hangers)
Complimentary mold exposure
Once a year behind the bed cleaning
$hitty Wiring
Complimentary mystery drugs
After I showered, I felt dirtier coming out than when I went in, but after using the towels, which at this place are not measured in 'threadcount,' but rather 'grit,' 40 in this case, I sanded off a few layers of skin drying off to make sure I had cleaned off any communicable diseases off. If you wake up without scabies in the morning at this place and you have done well for yourself.
The day had started earlier on the banks of the Owens River, with my buddy giving me an impromptu lesson in indicator nymphing.
"Strike indicator? That thing's a glorified bobber."
"It's called a strike indicator! Keep your voice down, there's fly fisherman around, I have a reputation to uphold."
"OK, so when the bobber goes under, I set the hook."
"Strike indicator!"
First lesson learned was to cast IN the water, and not into the trees behind me.
Second lesson is that waders are pretty important especially when you want to cover good stretches, as it seems 95% of the fish live in 5% of the river, and 95% of the river is inaccesible without waders. I was shown what a good drift looks like, and on the first drift, my buddy hooks a fish and hand it over to me. A few drifts later, while being explained what mending is, he hooks another one and hands it to me.
I did get one to go by myself, and I can definitely see how this sport can be addictive.
And I still think it should be called a bobber.
*
While watching 3 pretty entertaining boxing matches, my buddy sends me a few pictures of local petroglyphs that are seemingly scattered all over the Owens Valley and mentioned that after 10 years of having visited the Eastern Sierras, he had never made a concerted effort to find them, let alone hike to them, probably because he already had his GFs in tow with him and their idea of a hike was going up those rusty stairs.
After a bit of internet sleuthing, we were pretty certain that we had found at least 1 of the glyphs, the 'holy grail' if you will of the entire valley. The initial hike was pretty brutal, but once we had found the general vicinity of the glyph, my buddy goes into mountain goat mode and begins rock scrambling trying to locate it, since it is not visible to the naked eye from the 'trail.' Sure enough, 5 minutes later, he's hollering that he's found it.
There was a second set of glpyhs that apparently were a small hike away, but we had absolutely no idea where. We wandered for a bit, walking towards what we thought were some explosed glyphs, which turned out to be the artwork of some dumbass who decided to use bullets to carve their own artwork.
And 5 minutes later, my buddy's hollering that he's found the second glyph.
We were beat when we got back to the car. The fly rods weren't even taken out today, and we made our way back to LA in the afternoon, not before a pitstop was made at Copper Top BBQ in Big Pine, which as anybody who's traveled the 395 can attest, makes some pretty decent tri tip. My first fish on a fly rod, my first exposure to the some pretty remarkable ancient artwork in this part of California.
(And we didn't get any scabies.)
