Snow covered Sierra in the rear view mirror from Hwy 395. Saturday morning, driving to the Mono Craters to climb Crater Mountain. Spent Friday night at the Tuttle Creek Campgrond in Lone Pine.

Still on 395 just north of Bishop.

A view of the Mono Craters west side. Crater Mountain is the one in the middle. I'll be climbing it from the east side.

There was a dirt road on the east side. Had to drive around this tree that fell across the road. There was fresh tire tracks under the tree, it must had fallen recently.

Crater Mountain from the east side. If I had the crampons could have climbed up this slope. Decided to try and avoid the snow by approaching the peak using the ridge from the left.

This is as far as I could drive. It's at about the 8,000' level. Made it though a few smaller patches of snow, but this one was just to large and icy to get though going up hill.

Didn't bring the GPS that had the topo maps loaded thinking it was going to be easy. Didn't know there was going to be so much trees that I couldn't see where the mountain was. Grabbed the GPS unit from the truck. It only had the roads loaded on it, but was able to mark the truck's location so I could find it on the way out.

Looking up to the crater that is just south of Crater Mountain.

Crater Mountain should be behind this ridge.

My first view of Mono Lake to the north.