Corral Creek

Corral Creek is an easily accessible place. If you hike, then you park and take a 20 minute mild hike up a hill. Alternatively you can drive here!

Where is this spot?

There are two ways to get to this spot. You can either drive all the way or hike. The pin to the spot itself is shown to the right on desktop or below on mobile.

The road to get this spot without hiking is below. Note that I have never driven this road and the road does cross a creek. Drive at your own risk.

If hiking, drive up Mountain Highway 99 and park at Corral Creek Campground shown in the map to the right on desktop and below the hiking map on mobile. The hike itself is relatively short. The path is laid out to the right on desktop and below on mobile. While the hiking up the hill from the north side of the lodge is less steep and is probably easier it is unfortunately on private property. The start of the hike is relatively steep so hiking poles may help here. The rest of the hike has a mild incline and isn't too bad. In total, the hike is roughly a half a mile. For a strong hiker, this may take 10-15 minutes. A more average hiker may take up to 30 minutes with the steep incline at the beginning.

Spotting Logistics from here

The first thing to note about this spot is that there are fire ants everywhere on this hill. There are also very little places to sit as rocks are few and far between and little to no shade. In terms of a view, you can see quite far to the north, but the view to the south is unfortunately pretty limited.

Jets will always approach from the south. It's 50/50 whether you hear them call point alpha since you're pretty far down in the valley and there's a mountain between you and the jet. You will get a decent amount of audio warning in terms of hearing the jets, but due to where you are in the valley it can be difficult to pick out exactly where the jet is coming from (by where it's coming from I mean low versus high). Due to this spot being pretty far south in the valley, a lot of jets are high up here. From my experience, around 50% of passes here are low (low being low enough for them to be landlocked in a picture). The jets that are high up are generally banking away from you. The jets that are low will generally start by banking away from you and then bank towards you. You can also hike much further up the hill with relative ease to get a bit more elevation on jets. This may mitigate some jets being quite high up.

Lighting

This spot is pretty much a north/south pass spot that favors the mornings. This means that this spot is best used in the fall and spring. Lighting is good from sunrise through the first bank of passes. Passes during the 1100 bank are toplit and get progressively more tail lit and backlit as the day goes on.

Pros and Cons

Pros of Spotting Here:

This spot is very accessible. It is the first spot you hit when driving up the Kern River Valley. You can drive all the way to this spot and even if you hike, the hike is relatively easy
You are actually quite close to the jets from this spot, so it's a good place to be at for those with limited focal length

Cons of Spotting Here:

There are fire ants everywhere
Many jets are high at this spot and/or they are banking away from you. The result is either a belly landlocked shot or a belly sky shot
With this spot being down in the valley and a mountain blocking line of sight to the south, you don't get much warning for passes. You won't hear every pass on scanner and the sound from the jet can be a bit inconclusive as to whether it is high or low