Crowley Lake Columns

Today I went for a trail run with my best friend since high school, Kelly. We ran cross country and track all four years at Redondo Union. We have many fond memories of running by the beach with our teammates and now we enjoy running on rugged mountain trails.

Kelly told me about a trail run down by Crowley Lake that has amazing views along the way and natural column formations at the turn around. Since I have this week off, we made plans to run it together.

This is about a 10 mile run with quite a bit of downhill on the way out and uphill on the way back. To get to the trail head from Mammoth Lakes, we drove south on highway 395 and turned left on Benton Crossing Road.

I refer to Benton Crossing as Green Church Road

It is about a 15 mile drive to the trail head after the turn off. We passed the Whitmore Animal Shelter, Brown's Owens River campground and then the road winds up into the hills. We took the second right onto a dirt road and this took us to a large opening for parking. The trail is a dirt road to the west of the parking area.

Benton Crossing Road

Brown's

View of the trail head from the parking area

The beginning of this run starts out flat for a bit and then quickly changes to uphill after you turn left at the fork in the trail. There are two forks on this run on the way out and on both you go left.

After this uphill the rest of the way is mainly downhill and flat to Crowley.

Approaching the shoreline

After about 4/4.5 miles we approached Crowley Lake shore and went off the trail. We followed the shoreline to the Crowley Lake columns, also known as the Chalk Bluffs.

Running along the shoreline

Approaching the columns

This run was pretty tough. I would recommend doing this early morning when it is still cool because there is no shade on the trail.

Most of these photos were taken with my iphone. Too bad I can't really run with my DSLR.

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