Headed to Mammoth this weekend with my family and dog.
I'm hoping my dog and I can hike something with a nice view for sunrise Saturday and possibly Sunday. Any suggestions? I'm thinking 6-10 miles RT. I want to be back at the hotel by 10am or so.
Saturday afternoon I think I'll take my wife (5 months pregnant), son (3 yrs old) and dog and try to hike to Rainbow Falls. Are there any other trails you can suggest?
Another option (I have not yet done) would be the "Panoramic Loop". Starts at Lake George trail head for Mammoth Crest Hike, and finishes at Trail head for Duck Pass/lake. See following link for more details.
Be prepared for a TON of people on the Rainbow Falls hike. I was there with my family a couple weeks ago, we went in nice and early so we wouldn't have to ride the shuttle. By 10 there were probably about 50 people in the pond under the falls, we counted another 200 or so on the trail heading back to Devils Postpile.
You can always tell when another shuttle has dropped off because of the sudden crowd of people coming through!
If you take your fishing pole.... they were really biting the day we were there!
Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I hiked to Mammoth Pass Saturday morning (we didn't check into our hotel until 2:30 AM), Rainbow Falls Saturday afternoon, then Duck Pass Sunday. Duck Pass was amazing!
I probably won't get to the photos and trip reports until the end of the week (huge backlog of gear reviews to finish), but here are some instagram links: