High Sierra Topix

Inyo NF:

The old mining road/trail from the Pine Creek Mine up to Morgan Pass which connects to Rock Creek/ Little Lakes Valley has a severe blow out from a recent gully washer.

The trail is washed out and in an area of loose substrate and in steep slope, making it quite unstable and dangerous.

It’s approximately 2.5 miles up the old mining road from Pine Creek trailhead.

Thanks for posting this information.

I was hoping to do a long loop via Morgan Pass from the Pine Creek side (returning via Italy Pass). I chatted with the Inyo permitting office today and they confirmed that the road up from Pine Creek along Morgan Creek is washed out.

Did you take this picture yourself? Any impressions about whether this route is now totally impassible? It's a bit hard to tell from the photo the extent of the erosion.

Quite a shame if it is indeed impassible; this looked like it'd be a great way to do loop trips between Little Lakes Valley and Pine Creek.

Not sure if this information is too late to help you out, but I just made an unanticipated descent of the Morgan Creek trail (former Pine Creek tungsten mining road) yesterday from the turn at about 9,800 feet down to the main Pine Creek road. Can confirm that the washouts are not totally impassible going downhill, but this required some steep scree skiing that I would call class 3 (grabbing onto small plants and edges of more stable rock to control the fall) and was not fun with full backpacks. I would definitely not recommend trying to bypass the washouts in the other direction (i.e. ascending), though signs indicate that some hikers hardier than I have done so (or attempted to do so).

Signs are clearly posted at both the Little Lakes Valley trailhead and the entrance to the Morgan Creek road advising hikers about the washout and that the route is now impassible. The former was seen briefly but disregarded as not relevant at the time, and the latter of course was noticed too late to be helpful.