Mono Lake

8/05/08

Down from Sonora Pass to I-395, south through Bridgeport, over Conway Summit (8143’) and down to a turnout with a stunning overview of Mono Basin some 1500’ below. Real storm clouds were looming overhead.

Mono Lake covers some 60 square miles of high desert floor. Like Pyramid Lake, it is but a remnant of its ancient greatness, part of the Pleistocene Lake now known as Lake Russell. While most of that lake has long dried up or been reduced to seasonal extensive but shallow puddles, the monumental snowfall of the Sierra peaks 6-7,000 above has provided enough melt water to sustain Mono Lake year-round for at least the last 760,000 years and maybe the last 1.3 million. It is one of the oldest lakes in the United States. The Great Lakes, by comparison, are 12,000-13,000 years old, while Great Salt Lake has dried up several times over the last million years.

But what climate change over the millennia has been unable to do, 20^th century humans set about blithely to achieve. In 1941, after condemning farmers’ rights, the City of Los Angeles began diverting water from the streams descending from the Sierras into Mono Lake, this in order to water its own desert some 300 miles away.  The city almost succeeded in its relentless and ruthless efforts to water its own desert regardless of the social or ecological consequences for Mono Lake.This a basin that receives 7 inches of snow and rain each year while losing 45 vertical inches of water to evaporation. Without inflows, the lake began to shrink. In 1941, before Los Angeles began diverting its tributary creeks, Mono Lake covered about 55,000 acres of basin lake bed, about 10,000 acres more than it did the day I looked down upon it.

Sure I thought, 1941 - The Bad Old Days - depression and world war, the Los Angeles of William Mulholland, Jack Nicholson and China Town. What I found flabbergasting, though, is in 1970, the year of the inaugural Earth Day, LA doubled its aqueduct capacity and drastically increased its withdrawals from the lake's inflow, leaving the lake and wildlife to who care's what, this right under the nose of the country’s most prestigious national park. It’s amazing the things that only recently seemed like perfectly reasonable things to do.

By the early 1980s the lake was reduced to 38,000 acres. It was drying and desiccating, being driven to dust like Owens Lake before it. If Yosemite National Park or any other government body had anything to say on the matter I haven’t heard of it. If it weren’t for the heroics dare-I-say of grass roots environmental action, this lake would barely be here at all. Two citizens groups, The Mono Lake Committee and the National Audubon Society, launched lawsuits and publicity campaigns, and after some sixteen years of court battles and formal hearings, the California Water Board in 1994 ruled that the city of Los Angeles could not drain Mono Lake dry. It could still take plenty of water, but it would have to start leaving enough for Mono Lake to rise 17 feet, to 6,392’, by the year 2014. This would still be 25’ below the 1941 lake level. As of 2008, Mono Lake had risen 8.7’ since the Water Board’s decision, with 7.7’ to go. It is not a simple engineering task, as snowmelt and evaporation levels matter, and how global warming will affect this no one knows. But we should have a Mono Lake for the foreseeable future. I recommend you go see it.

I hustled down to the Visitors Center for a crash course. By then a sun break was throwing light on two islands in the middle of the lake, volcanic islands that are some of the most recent volcanoes in the US. Part of a range extending southeast from the lake, adding to the eerieness of the scene. The Visitors Center had lots of good desert plants and good signage the sort I missed up in Lava Beds, and I began my education there: saltbrush, rabbit brush. Dusk was falling so I had to go grab a campsite along nearby Lee Vining Creek, the second most prolific inflow into Mono Lake.

The next morning I hustled back to Mono Lake for sunrise and got lucky. Big broken clouds were reflecting the sun as it approached the horizon, the clouds in turn reflecting on the shallow lake, gulls and exposed tufa further elaborating the scene. A real photographer could have won an award or two but I seemed to be the only one who showed up. I took a million pictures, each more beautiful than the one before. Here’s just one:

Mono Lake

I found a shower thank God at a nearby RV park and ate lunch at a green little Mono County park, before settling in to read the very informative Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve brochure (1997/2002). This is no ordinary lake. It sustains enormous evaporation and the salts and minerals that the streams flush down from the Sierras remain, of course, making Mono Lake 2.5 times saltier and 80 times more alkaline than seawater. [though how alkaline is seawater?] Very few creatures survive in this water. Mono Lake has no fish. It’s a very simple ecology, at least in terms of numbers of players. But these few species "thrive in astronomical numbers".

The food chain begins with the decayed organic matter - detritus - that washes down the creeks with the water and the salts. Green algae, a microscopic one-celled plant, grows on the detritus and the sunlight. Winter algae blooms turn the lake into pea green soup. Then the two stars of the Mono Lake ecosystem, the brine shrimp and the alkali fly (which sounds like a nursery rhyme to me) feast on the algae

“At the height of the summer season, an estimated four trillion shrimp swim in Mono’s waters.“ An industrial fishing operation harvests nearly 250 tons of shrimp every year for fish food, a harvest that apparently doesn’t put a dent in the population. Most adult shrimp die or are eaten by grebes in the fall. As winter approaches the adult brine shrimp begin to die off, but not before they lay eggs that will over winter in the lake bottom mud.

More than eighty species of migratory birds visit Mono Lake each spring and summer to feed on the lake‘s munificent shrimp and fly population. From 80,000 to 100,000 phalaropes visit Mono Lake in July and August. An estimated 1.5 million Eared grebes visit Mono Lake during the fall migration from August through October. “About 50,000 adult California gulls fly to Mono Lake from the coast each spring to nest… Approximately 90% of the California population of this species are born at Mono Lake.

But maybe the most unique feature of the lake only appeared more recently, though they are old. Tufa towers. Emerged when Los Angeles began withdrawing water from the creeks running into Mono Lake. In 1982, California designated the Lake Tufa State Reserve to protect exposed tufa and other natural features on the state-owned lakebed lands below 6417' elevation. In 1984, Congress designated the 116,000 acre Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area, the first of its kind for the USFS.

After lunch I strolled out on a boardwalk to see some tufa. These are the same phenomenon as at Pyramid Lake though they look quite a bit different here. They seem to have a different structure to them, a rougher surface. The lake has been lowered so much that the tufas are out in the middle of tall grass, adding to their surreal character. As do the dark storm clouds. Signs note where the shoreline had been just decades earlier.

tufa

An irony in the recovery of Mono Lake is that the tufa towers, the primary scenic wonder of the place, certainly as measured by postcards but also by the two primary visitor stations, will once more be submerged as the lake recovers. Yet we see the tufa only because LA diverted inflow and lowered the lake’s water level. As the lake water rises, existing visitor stations will be inundated and the spectacular tufa towers will no longer be visible. It is ironic that the lake’s protection is dedicated in effect to removing the place’s main claim to fame. Not contradictory, just ironic.

Adding to the wonders of the place, Mono Lake is the site of much volcanic activity. Two volcanic features pop up in the lake, while another range of volcanoes run down to the south.

I drove past the Mono Volcanoes and into South Tufa Beach, another place to avoid on hot sunny days. This day, though, some serious thunderclouds were building up, promising relief from the sun though also raising the odd chance of instant death from a lightning strike. The ranger at the kiosk was watching the storm through her binoculars, ready to clear out from her slight shelter should the storm come too close. I took cover in the relative safety of my Yaris and watched the storm slide over the lake, dropping only a pleasant rain on the dirt parking lot. When the storm passed I went back out to the shore for some stormy lit tufa pictures.

Mono Lake has no car camping, just walk-in camping along the beach and I didn’t feel like doing that. So I took a tip from a ranger and found a free campsite in a dispersed area in the nearby national forest. I scouted about and found a nice enough place, totally deserted which cuts both ways for me: quiet and peaceful but a little more vulnerable should the wrong kind of neighbor show up. In such instances I wait until dusk to pitch my tent, minimizing my vulnerability and maximizing my mobility. In fact the night went just swell, and the next morning I set out early to Yosemite.