Convict Lake has a trail that runs all the way around it. It’s not a long walk and the views are unforgettable.
Also unforgettable are the bathrooms.
My wife and I have traveled by car all over the United States and we’ve been to all manner of state and national parks and we’ve seen all manner of public bathrooms. Most are just fine, but occasionally you run into one that grosses you out. I’ve been to bathrooms where you have to fight the urge to wretch just walking up to the door. I’ve been to bathrooms where your best bet is to hold your breath for as long as you can, and then mouth breathe shallow breaths after that, and maybe keep your sunglasses on, too, to deaden the shock.
Nothing prepared me for the bathrooms at Convict Lake. We checked them all, even at different locations, and they were all the same. I won’t go into details—I’m no sadist—but suffice it to say that it was difficult to see the toilet under a mountain of soiled toilet paper. I don’t know where all of the TP came from, but the supply here apparently is near endless.
I debated taking a picture to share here on Noovango. Should I? Shouldn’t I? In the end, I did not, not so much out of respect for readers (and I have plenty of respect for readers) but because I worried that if I made even a single photograph, then the image of that toilet would be forever in my brain. I didn’t make a photograph to save you, I didn’t make a photograph to save me.
But, ahhh, the lake! Situated not far from Highway 395 in Owens Valley, near Lee Vining, the lake is a popular spot, and deservedly so.
At the far side of the lake, we were blocked by a flooded trail. Water was flowing shin-deep everywhere we looked, and the thin log that seemed to be placed for us to use to cross was wobbly and uncertain. We could have easily crossed by just walking through the water, but neither of us wanted to get our shoes soaked or to walk barefoot in the rocks. Feeling we had seen ninety percent of what there was to see, we turned back and were puzzled to be overtaken by a scouting troop, each kid with dry shoes.
Convict Lake has beauty, sure, but it also has history.
The lake had an earlier name, Mt. Diablo Lake, but that changed after a prison break in Carson, in Nevada, then a state only a few years old, set 29 criminals on a trail of mayhem that would lead cross-country to the campsite of some of them, here at the lake. More mayhem ensued and then lynchings.
There’s a tree here, an old tree, now dead, that is said to have been the site of those hangings, but that is not true, or perhaps the site of some other hangings, and that’s probably not true, either. Nevertheless, it is called the Hanging Tree, which I guess sounds more interesting than “some random dead tree.”
There was a terrible accident here in 1990 when three kids from a nearby youth camp fell through the ice-covered lake. Three adults, two of the camp counselors and one park service employee, died attempting a rescue. Just awful to think about. There is a plaque here to mark the event.
We parked about halfway down the parking area along the northeast side of the lake. Even from across the lake a 10-foot-tall Noovo Plus should be visible. Can you make it out?
Or how about in this zoomed-in image? (Hint: Find the tall tree, our Granite Gray Noovo is just to the left, partly obscured by smaller trees.)
Surprisingly, Convict Lake is a deep lake, reaching a depth of 140 feet, the mountains of contrasting rocks partly ringing it and providing an extraordinarily rewarding short hike.
Photos and video by Lori and Darin