Uploaded November 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

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0:02 Preamble
0:49 Introduction
1:15 Mono Lake Tufa
3:55 A word about conservation and storytelling
7:10 Chidago Canyon
10:52 Chidago Petroglyph Site
12:54 No high fiving the camera

“Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand feet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds. This solemn, silent, sail-less sea—this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth—is little graced with the picturesque. It is an unpretending expanse of grayish water, about a hundred miles in circumference, with two islands in its centre, mere upheavals of rent and scorched and blistered lava, snowed over with gray banks and drifts of pumice-stone and ashes, the winding sheet of the dead volcano, whose vast crater the lake has seized upon and occupied.” Mark Twain, Roughing It Chapter, 1872

If a place is worth going to, chances are, it’s worth going back. But even in a lifetime of adventure, there are still things we haven’t seen. The world doesn’t always seem that small when you’re driving or hiking and meandering down back roads.

Someone has always been there before. yesterday, or farther back. We’re not the first to walk out and look up and know there’s something special here—sometimes, there are a bunch of them right there with you. Sometimes, you’re all alone.

You can look at it one of two ways. You’re either all alone or enjoying the solitude. You’re either besieged by crowds or part of a community. It all depends on your point of view.

Chidago Canyon Petroglyphs

There’s more than one way to get anywhere. Usually, a long way, a short way, and an “I wouldn’t go that way.” We usually prefer the third option because it’s more fun. In the case of getting to the native american petroglyph sites in the Volcanic tablelands north of Bishop, Ca, the ultimate option is Chidago Canyon Road.

Chidago Canyon Road is an easy dirt road that, at one point, follows a wash through a tight but shallow canyon cut through volcanic tuff from the Long Valley Caldera in the Volcanic Table Lands just north of Bishop, CA. From US Highway 395 South past the Mammoth Lakes Exit, turn left on Benton Crossing Road then right on Chidago Canyon Road, then right on Fish Slough Road. It’s about 16.5 miles from the intersection with Benton Crossing Road.

Would we advise you to take a rented 2-wheel drive wagon with no spare tire on that road? We would not. Would we do it again? We sure would.

You can play it safe and bypass all that mess from a shorter, simpler dirt road to access this site from the south end of Fish Slough Road in Bishop. Playing it safe is a relative practice, though. Most things we worry about never happen anyway[Tom Petty], except the regret that inevitably follows missing out on something epically cool because you played it safe. Anyway, “Worry is dividend paid to disaster before it is due.” [Ian Flemming]

Once you get to the Chicago Canyon Petroglyph site, you’ll find a volcanic outcrop at the base of a butte decorated with petroglyphs and excluded by a split rail fence. you can scramble over the tuff talus to the top of the hill and take in the sweeping vistas there of the East side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the west face of the White Mountains. Please respect the site for what it is and be mindful of your impact on it. Not all have done so, but that doesn’t mean you have a pss.

We weren’t completely alone for our visit, but it also wasn’t super crowded. The kids took the camera around to be silly and shoot some footage for this video.

I definitely think we’ll go back to the places we visited that day. The landscape is changing there and everywhere we go, you can’t deny that. And we all leave our mark minimal though it may be. We might be alone. We might be besieged by crowds. With any luck though, we’ll find that community.

There are no services or facilities there. To get out head on down Fish Slough Road and into the town of Bishop, CA.

Happy Trails