Bishop

We rolled into Bishop at dusk with the Sierra turning pink on our left, and I remember thinking the mountains looked fake — a painted backdrop propped up behind a dusty main street of motels and gear shops. But they’re real, and they’re enormous: from the sagebrush floor at 4,000 feet, the peaks leap to 14,000 in one uninterrupted rise. Lia rolled the window down and the air came in cold and clean and smelling of sage. We had come to climb, and we had come, honestly, for the bakery.

Schat’s, and the ritual of the sandwich

Let me deal with the bakery first, because in Bishop you cannot avoid it. Erick Schat’s Bakkery has been baking its “Sheepherder Bread” since forever, and every climber, hiker and road-tripper in the Eastern Sierra passes through its doors. We stood in a long, cheerful line, bought a warm loaf and two enormous sandwiches, and ate them on the tailgate with the mountains in front of us. It sounds like a small thing. It is not. In a landscape this severe, the ritual of the good sandwich — dependable, generous, warm — is what makes the town a town and not just a trailhead.

The Buttermilks

The real reason climbers come is the boulders. West of town, up a dirt road toward Mount Tom, the Buttermilks are a field of enormous rounded granite eggs strewn across the sagebrush, some the size of houses. We spent a morning there, chalk on our hands, working the same short problems over and over, falling onto crash pads and lying in the dirt laughing. The rock is coarse and merciless on the fingertips and the drops are genuinely frightening. But between attempts you sit on a boulder with the whole Sierra crest laid out white and gold in front of you, and there is nowhere on earth you’d rather have sore hands.

Up into the canyons

When our fingers gave out we went up into the water. Bishop Creek Canyon climbs from town toward South Lake and Lake Sabrina, and the road switchbacks from desert into aspen and pine in half an hour. We walked out to a chain of alpine lakes below the crest, past anglers standing hip-deep in cold streams, the aspens just beginning to turn. Higher still, the trail toward the John Muir Wilderness disappears into a country of granite and snow. We didn’t go far — we didn’t need to. Just sitting by that water, at 9,000 feet, with the peaks doubled in the surface, was the whole point of coming.

Getting There

Bishop sits on Highway 395, the great Eastern Sierra road, about 260 miles from Los Angeles (four to five hours) and a similar haul from Reno to the north. There’s no passenger rail and the nearest major airports are Reno and Las Vegas, so this is firmly a road trip — but 395 itself is one of the finest drives in America, so that’s no hardship. Note that Tioga Pass over the Sierra to Yosemite is closed by snow much of the year, which keeps Bishop feeling remote from the coast. Come prepared for big temperature swings: hot afternoons, cold nights, and thin air that will leave you breathless on the first climb.