Eastern Sierra Sketches

We’ve returned from our camping jaunt to the Eastern Sierras relaxed and happy. Pica had never been south of Lake Tahoe in the Sierras so I was able to show her some places I had been to before, though not for a long time. Every night we stayed in a different location and habitat, so we had quite the natural history tour, travelling from the Carson Pass area south to the White Mountains. Here are several sketches and paintings I did during our journey.

At right above is Woods Lake, near Carson Pass, where we stayed the first evening of our trip. This is a small glacial lake at 8250’ elevation in lodgepole pine and red fir forest. Happily they don’t allow motorboats on it, and only a few paddlers were sauntering forth on the lake.

After reaching Highway 395, the highway running along the east side of the Sierras, we turned south, reaching Mono Lake on Tuesday. The area from the Mono Basin south to the town of Bishop has very interesting volcanic geology, there being a series of recent cinder cones, rhyolitic lava flows, and active hot springs. Mono Lake is also known for its tufa towers, which are towers up to ten or fifteen feet tall formed when calcium carbonate precipitates out of spring water flowing from underneath the lake into the alkaline and highly saline lake water. At left is a sketch of some of these tufa towers.

The literal high point of our journey was our trip up into the White Mountains to see the bristlecone pines, the oldest living organisms on Earth, in a grove above 10,000 feet in elevation. Some of these pines have been dated by tree ring analysis to be older than 4,600 years. We stayed at a campground about 1500 feet in elevation below the bristlecone pine forest in pinyon-juniper woodland, which I think is gorgeous landscape. At right is a detail of leaves and berries of Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma), the species of juniper up there.

The other reason for our stay in the White Mountains was to see the Perseid meteor shower. There were a number of other amateur astronomers already staying at our campsite, giving the night a bit of a flavor of a star party. It was a calm and warm night, and we quite enjoyed sleeping out under the stars and meteors.