The Heart Lake trail is often overlooked for its bustling neighbor, Duck Pass trailhead, but the short trail offers amazing views of the lakes basin and surrounding mountains that honestly overshadow its namesake little lake. You can also bring your pup and fishing gear and spend more time at the lake itself.
While Cory was off bumbling in the backcountry for a few days, River and I hung back at our family’s condo in Mammoth Lakes and explored some dog-friendly trails in the area. One of them was the Heart Lake trail, whose trailhead is in the same parking lot as the much more heavily trafficked Duck Pass trail. I think one reason this trail gets much less use is that it only leads to one lone lake, as opposed to the dozens you can access from its neighboring trailhead.
The Heart Lake trailhead is located at the end of the one way road at the end of Coldwater Creek Campground past the main Duck Pass trailhead. The beginning of the trail is also host to a shorter loop through the ruins of Mammoth Consolidated Mine.
Dogs are actually allowed off leash beyond the parking lot, but I chose to keep River on leash as its a trail we’ve never been on and I wanted to her to pace herself (she tends to tire out much more quickly off leash, as you can imagine, too much puppy excitement).
We noticed that most people were hanging around the very short mine loop. One we got past that area and started going up we had much more peace and quiet – we only passed one person on their way down!
The trail makes it way along the ridge and is fairly unprotected in parts. At the end of each switchback there were some healthy stands of trees, including this cool grove of aspens:
Higher up, the long stretches between switchbacks had no trees, which made it a pretty warm hike but also gave way to awesome views of the Mammoth Crest across the way.
There were ton’s of Woolly mule’s ears plants along this section of the trail. You can see River sniffing one above. Something else that was also abundant but less welcome were the FLIES. I’m not sure I’ve seen so many annoying flies away from water on such a wide open section of a hike. There were so many that they were even getting on River’s nerves and we almost turned around. But at this point we were more than halfway so we trudged on through the army of flies.
There’s a lack of photos after the final switchback because we were half running to make it to the lake in the hopes we would escape the flies – thankfully we did! Just before the lake we entered John Muir Wilderness (there’s a sign a didn’t take a photo of) and got into the trees and peace and quiet again. Just a few minutes later we rounded a corner to Heart Lake!
The first thing I noticed were the hoard of corn lilies along the lake. They were just staring to flower and weren’t quite at peak yet.
The water of Heart Lake has a pretty green blue hue and the lake itself is fairly small. Since it was morning I was expecting to see some rises (I had read that there were some fish in the lake), but I actually didn’t see any! I opted not to bring my fishing pole since I already had my camera and my pup to lug along.
After chilling along the shore and letting River get her paws wet in the lake to cool off, we made our way along a use trail to the right. It got a little bushy here so I have no photos, but eventually we walked up a small hill and onto a ridge, then to the right…
…and then we were treated to a spectacular view of the lakes basin below!
From here we could see the trail we walked up, Lake Mary, Crystal Craig, Mammoth Mountain, and even the Minarets and Banner and Ritter. Heart Lake is a cute little lake, but this view definitely stole the show!
