Trails Motel, Lone Pine

We booked a room at the trails motel for a group of us that were going to hike Mt. Whitney. We were driving up from LA after work on Thursday evening and were not going to arrive until about midnight. We let the motel know this when we booked, and then again on the day of our travel. The innkeeper called us twice while we were on the road to confirm that we would indeed be using the room (I suspect they had others there at the time who were looking for a room and couldn't find anything as the whole town was booked up), and we confirmed we were on our way and that we would be arriving that night. This hotel has a 24-hour cancellation policy, which means we would be charged for the room whether or not we used it. One would think that this, plus the fact we had confirmed our late arrival, would ensure that they held our room for our late arrival. Unfortunately, we arrived at midnight to find the office closed and no one around. We rang the bell and called the hotel several times, but were unable to reach anyone. The office was locked and had a small sign saying no vacancy. We waiting around and continued trying to reach them for about 30 minutes, but no one showed up. Since it was midnight before a popular hiking weekend, all of the other rooms in town were sold out, and we had to drive an additional hour up to Bishop just to find a room. We were tired, frustrated and angry. We could not understand why the motel would give our room away after having confirmed that we were on our way. Adding insult to injury, when we went by the next day to complain and cancel our reservation for the remaining days, the hotel owner lied to us and insisted that he was there all night. I explained to him that we knocked, called and rang bells for 30 minutes, so either he was calling me a liar, or he was lying to me. Why on earth would we have driven 1 hour out of our way each way (at 12:30 am!) to stay in Bishop otherwise?? Not only did this hotel not have the decency to hold our room as promised, they lied to us after the fact and did not apologize for the inconvenience. I would strongly urge you to avoid reserving a room here to prevent the same from happening to you.