Chicken Spring Lake via Cottonwood Pass
Chicken Spring lake is a fairly easily accessible lake in the Eastern Sierra situated near the Pacific Crest trail and in the shadow of Cirque Peak. While there are no fish in the lake anymore, there were plenty of tadpoles and frogs in early July.
Table of Contents
Trail Description
The Trail to Chicken Spring lake begins near Horseshoe Meadow in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Traversing approximately 8.5 miles round-trip to the lake and back, this moderate to strenuous trail climbs to an elevation gain of over 2,000 feet, leading hikers through diverse terrain and alpine meadows.
The trail is popular with day hikers and especially popular with PCT hikers in June/ July as this is a main resupply point for them before getting deeper into the Sierra range.
At just under 4.5miles one way with a relatively small elevation gain,I’d put this as a beginner and kid friendly hike.
Directions to the Trailhead
The road to the Cottonwood Pass trailhead is not for the faint of heart. It is located approximately 20 miles outside of the town of Lone Pine in the Owens Valley. The road is very steep and narrow, at times narrowing to a single lane of traffic. The views of the valley however are unparalleled. With the resurgence of Owens Lake in 2023 and 2024 this road offers some of the best views of the lake in its splendor.
An interesting note is that the road was originally built for a proposed Disney Ski resort which was never built.
You can follow the google maps link here
Trip Report
Day 0 – Horseshoe Meadow walk in campground
Our overnight backpacking trip was taken starting July 5th 2024, during the time that Bishop and the Owens valley setting record high temperatures at 107 to 108*. This made the temperature at the trailhead in the low 70’s. A bit warm for uphill hiking but quite nice for sitting around and enjoying the time.
We spent the night before the hike at the walk-in campground at horseshoe meadow. We arrived around 10am on Thursday July 4th to a mostly empty campground at the trailhead. of the 20 or so developed sites, only 5 or 6 of them were occupied. By 8pm nearly all of the sites would be occupied. The campground does not have any running water, but does offer a pair of vault toilets.
The sites are clearly marked and have fire pits and either individual or shared bear boxes, depending on the proximity of the site (our site shared one with the site next door, hence the size of it). The campground was fairly busy in the afternoon with many of the people arriving that time, but was quiet for us at night as most of the people there were hikers or backpackers and retired early.
The walk in campground shares the same parking lot as the trailhead. According to a sign at the campground there are 180 parking spaces, so there was no shortage of parking, even on the busy holiday
Day 1 – Cottonwood Pass to Chicken Spring Lake
We woke up a bit later than desired, around 5:30 to sunlight and an active campground. We packed our things and then drove the 1/8th of a mile in order to park a bit closer to the trailhead. We placed our small ice chest in the bearbox at the trailhead, took a look at the signs and then began down (up?) the trail.
The trail starts out level, going through a lightly wooded section. Right away we encountered the sign for entering the Golden Trout wilderness.
Not long after the Golden Trout Wilderness sign comes the junction in the trail to either go to trail pass, or head right to go to Cottonwood Pass. Obviously for this trip we chose the path to the right.
A short distance up the trail you get the first view of Horseshoe Meadow through the trees.
Continuing on the trail we emerged from the trees and received the first view of Horseshoe Meadow itself. The trail doesn’t go through the meadow but skirts the northern edge. The trail in this area is very sandy and with a heavy pack can be tiresome to walk on. It gets better once you get back to the treeline though. (Just noticed the large bird flying by as I was uploading this)
After about a mile or so the trail re-enters a more heavily wooded forest area. For us it was a welcome respite from the sun that was already getting strong despite it only being 8 or so in the morning.
Once getting back to the more wooded area we came to the only water crossing of the trip (ok there were two but they were right next to each other so I count them as one). There was a set of double logs on the left side of the stream that made the crossing easy. The second crossing involved some long steps and 1 jump for the kid, but we all made it without anyone getting wet.
The first 2 miles or so of the trail, while sandy, is pretty flat and easy going. About 2.5 miles in you encounter the beginning of the switchbacks and the real part of the climb. Even these though are not terribly difficult, and while there are steps, they are fairly minimal. After not having done any hiking or backpacking of note for a year, they were not fun for us, but we made it up them fairly easily.
As we climbed toward 11,000′ the trees thinned out and we began to see the flowers emerge. Of course you might only see these in the early season, and even we were on the tail end of the flower season. But they were still showing their colors.
As we continued climbing there was a densely vegetated section that seemed more appropriate to be found on more level terrain. There were signs that this was very wet recently, but the trail was in good shape when we went through.
Finally after 3.75 miles we reached the top of Cottonwood Pass. The views down to Horseshoe meadow and beyond are something that would make it worth the hike even as a day hike. There was a patch or two of snow near the summit of the pass. Just enough for the kid to make a snowball and whet her appetite for snow.
Didn’t get a photo of it, but at the top of the Pass, there’s a nice cluster of trees and big rocks that made it a perfect spot for a lunch break.
Just a couple hundred feet on the west side of the pass is the junction for the Pacific Crest Trail. Unlike most times when you cross over a mountain pass, there is no downhill this time. We headed north on the PCT which continued our uphill journey (not so steep as climbing the pass though). Fortunately Chicken Spring Lake is only about another 3/4 of a mile past the junction.
Chicken Spring Lake is about 1/4 mile off of the PCT, there’s no sign pointing the way to it, but as we headed north, we knew where it was due to the outflow from it crossing the trail. There’s also a pretty significant trail heading north as well so despite the lack of signage it is easy to find. Notice the tree in the back right of the image above. It gets its close up directly below.
Here’s a close up of the tree, there’s a sign that helpfully points the way back to the trail as it is a bit indistinct, also a reminder that we’re above 10k feet so there’s no fires allowed.
As we passed the tree and gained the top of a small rise, we saw a very nice meadow on our left. The meadow is shown the image above, the trail is just in the trees to the left of the image. During the time we were there it didn’t seem like the best idea to go into that meadow due to the significant amount of bugs (no so much mosquitoes just bugs) and the beautiful and fragile flowers that were growing.
After passing the meadow there is one more rise to climb and then the lake comes into view. We selected a campsite that overlooked the lake, but was still far enough away to avoid any bugs or sparking the ire of the JMT Trail crews that were there remediating campsites that were too close to the water or too close to the trail along the lake. There was plenty of room for our Nemo Dagger 3.
Due to the aforementioned JMT trail survey and work crew, as well as a plethora of PCT hikers, this was one of the more “crowded” trail camps we have experienced. There were probably 15+ campers within 200 yards of our site. We could have mitigated some of this by choosing a more remote site on the west side of the lake but we couldn’t have known that. (the east side of the lake is where the survey crew was). All in all it wasn’t an issue for us, as in typical backpacker fashion everyone went to bed before darkness came.
The lake itself was sadly without fish, but there were some frogs and tadpoles in the shallows. The water, as is usually the case in the high lakes, crystal clear and nice and cold. Walking down toward the outlet in the evening allowed for the capture of one of the better mirror reflections of the background hills.
Our original intent was to stay the night at this lake, and then the next day hike down to Big Whitney Meadow. The child continued to be in a great mood, and we didn’t want to ruin that by having an 8 mile day the next day so we decided to cut the trip short after one night to leave a good impression in her mind.
We woke up early the next day and hiked the nice downhill without incident. The 7 year old officially declared that we would take no more than 5 breaks on the way down. To our amazement we made it with only 3!
