There’s a window every spring when Highway 120 — Tioga Pass — is still buried, but the lower stuff is wide open. Mammoth has lifts spinning. Bishop is short-sleeve weather. The east side of the Sierra is a desert on the bottom and a glacier on the top.
If you’re going to be patient about anything in your life, be patient about this window. It is the best time to be in the Eastern Sierra.
Mornings
Ski. Mammoth or June. June has fewer people and the parking is free and it skis better than its reputation. Take whatever you can get on Chair 1 and Chair 2 and call it a day by noon.
Afternoons
Drive south. The Buttermilks outside Bishop are warm enough by April to boulder in. Even if you don’t climb, the dirt roads behind the boulders go forever and the camping is free. You can sleep on a flat granite slab the size of a basketball court for nothing.
Evenings
Hot springs. The east side has a dozen of them. Wild Willy’s. Hot Tub. Crab Cooker. Mostly free, mostly clothing-optional, mostly clean. Drive in on a dirt road, soak until the stars come out, drive back to camp. This is a more legitimate use of an evening than almost anything else.
Food
Erick Schat’s Bakery in Bishop. The Whoa Nellie Deli at the Mobil in Lee Vining when 120 opens. Looney Bean in Mammoth Lakes. That’s it. That’s the list.
Sleeping
Pleasant Valley Pit, Volcanic Tableland, the dirt roads above Crowley Lake. All free, all legal as of last time I checked (always check the BLM website — rules drift). Pull off, level out, sleep.
The day Tioga opens
Usually somewhere between mid-May and mid-June, depending on the year. CalTrans posts it the day before. When it opens, the whole east side empties — everyone drives over to Tuolumne Meadows for the first weekend Yosemite is reachable from the east. That’s when you leave and come back two weeks later, after the rush.
The whole trick is timing the wait. Stay one more week. The pass will open. So will the season.