The Five Best Easy Hikes in the Eastern Sierra

Our first two lists ranked the five best hikes in the Eastern Sierra and then numbers ten through six. Both were built for people willing to climb two thousand feet at altitude.

This one isn't. These are the walks you do on the day you arrive, before your body has figured out the elevation. The ones you take a seventy-year-old parent on, or a six-year-old, or a friend who says they don't hike. The ones you do at seven in the morning because you couldn't sleep and the light is good.

Easy hiking needs different criteria than hard hiking, so the weights changed:

Scenery per effort — 35%. Payoff measured against work. The whole point.

Gentleness — 25%. Grade, footing, distance, and how much the altitude asks of you.

Uniqueness — 20%. Whether you can see this anywhere else. On a short walk it's the thing you remember.

Access — 10%. Road, parking, distance off Highway 395.

Season — 10%. How many months of the year you can actually go.

Counting down from five. None of these require a permit. Two charge a small per-person entry fee, noted below.

5. Lundy Canyon — 7.05

Trailhead: End of Lundy Lake Road, about 7,800 ft. From Highway 395 north of Lee Vining, take Lundy Lake Road west about five miles past the lake. The last stretch is dirt and rough enough that you'll drive it slowly.

Distance: About 3 miles round trip to the first waterfall and the beaver ponds. The trail keeps going and gets steep after roughly a mile and a half — turn around when it stops being fun. Elevation gain: Gentle for the first stretch, then it climbs hard. Stay low and you'll gain a few hundred feet. Permit or fee: None.

What you're looking at: Beaver ponds — actual working beaver dams, which almost nobody expects in the Sierra — stacked up the canyon floor, with waterfalls dropping in from the headwall above. The canyon walls are lined with aspen, and in the last week of September or the first week of October this is one of the best fall color displays in California.

Peaks in view: Mount Scowden and the ridge running toward Excelsior Mountain, 12,446 ft, close the head of the canyon. Mount Warren, 12,332 ft, stands to the south.

Why it's fifth: It scores well on scenery and it's genuinely special in autumn. It loses points on the road, on the fact that the easy part ends abruptly, and on a season that's really only about four months long. Go in fall, walk to the ponds, don't feel obligated to continue.

4. Parker Lake — 7.15

Trailhead: Parker Lake, about 7,800 ft. From the June Lake Loop (CA-158), take Parker Lake Road a couple of miles west on decent dirt.

Distance: 3.6 miles round trip. Elevation gain: About 650 ft, and nearly all of it comes in the first half mile. Permit or fee: None.

What you're looking at: The trail starts in open sagebrush with Mono Lake behind you, climbs a short exposed pitch, then flattens into aspen and pine and stays flat to the lake. Parker Lake sits in a steep glacial bowl with a headwall rising straight out of the far shore.

Peaks in view: Parker Peak, 12,861 ft, stands over the lake. Mount Wood, 12,657 ft, rises to the north. Looking back east on the return, Mono Lake spreads out below you.

Why it's fourth: The best straightforward lake hike in this class — you get a real alpine lake with a real headwall for well under four miles. The opening climb is exposed and can be hot by midmorning, which is the only thing keeping it from scoring higher on gentleness. Start early and it's a pleasant walk. Start at noon in August and you'll remember that first half mile.

3. Bristlecone Discovery Trail — 7.45

Trailhead: Schulman Grove Visitor Center, 10,075 ft. From Big Pine, take CA-168 east about 13 miles, then left on White Mountain Road for roughly 10 miles of steady climbing. The road closes with winter snow, generally from around November into late May.

Distance: 1 mile loop. Elevation gain: About 275 ft, topping out near 10,350 ft. Permit or fee: Small per-person day-use fee, or an interagency pass.

What you're looking at: Great Basin bristlecone pines — the oldest known non-clonal living things on Earth. Trees on this mountainside have been alive for more than four thousand years, and they look it: trunks stripped to bare polished wood, twisted into shapes that read as sculpture, with a thin ribbon of living bark keeping the whole thing going. The longer Methuselah Trail, 4.5 miles, runs from the same parking lot if you want more.

Peaks in view: You're standing on the flank of the White Mountains, with White Mountain Peak, 14,252 ft, the third-highest summit in California, to the north. Look west across the Owens Valley and the entire Sierra crest is laid out in front of you — the Palisades, Mount Humphreys, the whole eastern wall from a vantage point almost nobody sees it from.

Why it's third: On uniqueness it scores a perfect 10, and the cross-valley view of the Sierra is worth the drive by itself. What holds it back is access. It's a long climb up White Mountain Road, the road is closed roughly half the year, and a mile at ten thousand feet is harder than a mile at five thousand — if you've just driven up from Los Angeles, you will feel it. Take it slowly and drink water.

2. Mono Lake South Tufa — 9.45

Trailhead: South Tufa, about 6,380 ft. From Lee Vining, go south on Highway 395 about five miles, east on CA-120 for another five, then follow the signed road to the parking area.

Distance: 1 mile self-guided loop. Elevation gain: Essentially none. Boardwalk and sand. Permit or fee: Small per-person entry fee for the Mono Basin Scenic Area.

What you're looking at: Tufa towers — calcium carbonate spires up to about thirty feet tall, built underwater over centuries where freshwater springs met the lake's alkaline water, then exposed when Los Angeles diverted the streams and the lake level dropped. They stand in and beside the water like ruins. Mono Lake itself is roughly a million years old, has no outlet, and is nearly three times saltier than the ocean.

Peaks in view: The Sierra crest rises across the lake to the west — Mount Dana at 13,061 ft and Mount Gibbs above Tioga Pass. South of the lake sit the Mono Craters, a chain of young volcanic domes.

Why it's second: There is nowhere else on the continent that looks like this. It's a flat mile, it's open all year, and it's five minutes off the highway. Sunrise and sunset are the reason to time it well — the towers throw long shadows and the water goes to glass. If you have one hour in the Mono Basin, spend it here.

1. Mobius Arch Loop, Alabama Hills — 9.50

Trailhead: Movie Road, about 4,500 ft. From Lone Pine, take Whitney Portal Road west about 2.7 miles, then right on Movie Road for roughly 1.5 miles to the signed pullout. The road is washboard dirt but fine for a normal car.

Distance: 0.6 mile loop. Elevation gain: About 40 ft. Permit or fee: None. This is BLM land, open and free.

What you're looking at: A field of weathered granite boulders, rounded and stacked, with Mobius Arch standing among them — a natural rock arch you can walk to in ten minutes. Frame the arch correctly and Mount Whitney sits inside it. This is also the most filmed landscape in the Eastern Sierra; hundreds of Westerns and features have shot here since the 1920s, and standing among the rocks you'll recognize backdrops you've seen your whole life without knowing where they were.

Peaks in view: Mount Whitney, 14,505 ft, the highest summit in the lower 48, with the jagged Whitney crest running north and south of it. Lone Pine Peak, 12,949 ft, is the big shoulder that most people mistake for Whitney because it looks closer and bigger. Mount Williamson, 14,379 ft, stands north.

Why it won: Two-tenths of a mile from the car you're looking at the highest mountain in the contiguous United States framed inside a granite arch, having gained forty feet of elevation. Nothing else in the Eastern Sierra returns that much for that little. It's free, it's open every day of the year, it works at any age and any fitness level, and at sunrise the granite turns orange while Whitney is still in shadow. If someone gives you one hour on the east side, this is where to spend it.

The scores

Weights: scenery per effort 35%, gentleness 25%, uniqueness 20%, access 10%, season 10%.

Note the gap. The top two score above 9.4 and the next three sit around 7. That's not a flaw in the scoring — it reflects something real. Mobius Arch and South Tufa are landscapes you walk into rather than hike to, open year-round, and unlike anything else in North America. The other three are good short hikes. The first two are destinations that happen to require almost no walking.

One more worth knowing

The Convict Lake loop would place high on this list — a flat two-and-a-half-mile shoreline walk under two of the most dramatic peaks in the range. We ranked it in our ten-through-six post instead, so it's not repeated here, but if you're building an easy day it belongs in the plan.

Before you go

The two highest hikes here, Bristlecone at 10,075 feet and Parker Lake at 7,800, will feel harder than their numbers suggest if you drove up from sea level that morning. That's normal. Slow down, drink water, and give yourself a night at Bishop or Mammoth before anything above nine thousand feet.

White Mountain Road to the bristlecones and the upper reaches of Lundy Canyon both close for winter, and dates move every year. Check before you drive — we keep every source we use on our conditions and closures page.

Every trail here is one we've walked. We don't publish a route we haven't.