Mono Lake

Mono Lake - October 3,2016 - Mono Lake Tufa (California) State Natural Reserve - Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area - Los Angeles Water Department

The Tioga Pass Road's drop down Lee Vining canyon redefines precipitous. The road itself, the engineers insist, has a maximum grade of 7%, but for the driver the bottom just drops out, a vision made more stark by the height and angle of the mountains rising above. I have often read how the Romantics used the word “sublime” to mean a pleasurable terror, but I had never actually felt that way in nature (I avoid roller coasters) until this day driving down from Yosemite. I was momentarily lost to vertigo. The funny thing is I'd driven down that road many times before. Maybe it's just age.

I set up at Aspen Campground Campground, at 7800 feet not much lower than Porcupine Flat but with at least partial protection by the rainshadow. Even in late September, Lee Vining Creek was roaring, thanks to water being released from Saddlebag Dam further upstream. A lively waterfall provided magnificent white noise. The creek is lined with pine trees, giving way to aspen further out in the riparian zone and then finally an ocean of sage. This is very high desert. A storm was coming, with snow possibly dropping to 7500', which is to say on my tent. The aspens, quaking like mad, were quite lovely reflecting in the sun.

My plan was go down to the Mono Lake Visitor Center but I was reading Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and found myself more interested in the predicament facing Kambili and her family than I was in my natural surroundings. This was a curious turnaround from my usual pattern, and not unwelcome, so I resolved the dilemma by reading all day. The timing was right; the forecast for the next day was cold and damp, and with no other prospects for daytime warmth, it would be a perfect day for a Visitors Center.

And this is a good one. The Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area Visitor Center it is called, a streamlined building sitting high on a sagebrush hill above Highway 395, providing great views over the entire Mono Basin. The facility is managed by the US Forest Service in partnership with  the National Park Service. People staffing the desk tended to be agency professionals, capable of answering more questions than the typical front-line staffers. I watched the three videos on offer, scrutinized the many displays, studied the interpretive signs, perused a solid book shop, and asked many questions. I was getting my money's worth (free).

A lot has been written about Mono Lake so it's hard to say anything new. Here I've tried to whittle a thumbnail overview to give my pictures some context for those who aren't familiar with the place. I have built upon my post from my 2008 visit to Mono Lake. If I visit another five-ten times I might have a cogent grasp of the place.

II

Mono Lake sits at 6378 feet at the eastern base of the Sierra batholith which rises abruptly as much as 7000 feet higher than the lake. The area gets a lot of sun and the lake is usually a scalding blue. Mono Lake is a terminal lake sitting in a closed basin, which means that water flows in but does not drain out. It either evaporates or sinks into the soil, leaving high concentrations of the salts and minerals that flowed in with the water. Mono Lake is currently about 2.5 times saltier and 80 times more alkaline than seawater.

Mono Lake currently covers some 65 square miles of high desert floor, a mere remnant of its ancient greatness, when it was a Pleistocene Lake - now known as Lake Russell - covering 338 square miles and reaching a depth of about 900 feet. Mono Lake is 159 feet at its deepest point and averages 57 feet in depth. While most of the other Pleistocene Lakes of the Great Basin have either dried up completely or been reduced to enormous seasonal puddles, the monumental snowmelt of the Sierra peaks has sustained 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.

Mono Lake from Highway 395 (during construction delay)

Mono Lake - 7,000 feet below  Dana Peak (October 2008)

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 the water rights of the area's farmers, 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. Mono Lake loses far more water to evaporation than it receives in rain and snow, so it began to shrink as soon as the creek inflows were cut off. In 1941, before Los Angeles began diverting its tributary creeks, Mono Lake covered about 86 square miles of basin lake bed, roughly 20 square acres more than it does today.

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, Los Angeles doubled its aqueduct capacity and drastically increased its withdrawals from the lake's inflow, leaving the lake and wildlife to who-cares-what. By 1982, Mono Lake held one-half the amount of water it held before Los Angeles began its diversions, 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.

The reason Yosemite National Park or any other government body had nothing to say on this matter was that everyone assumed Los Angeles' legal control of the water flowing down from the Sierras was iron-clad. If it weren’t for the heroics dare-I-say of grass roots environmental action, the lake would have continued to shrink, with devastating effects on the wildlife that uses it and the air quality of the basin. 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 feet below the 1941 lake level, and in fact the goal was not met. The water level peaked at 6384.0 in April 2014 and dropped back down to 6377.1' in December 2016, its lowest level since July of 1995. Lake recovery is not a simple engineering task. Snowmelt and evaporation levels matter, and California is enduring a serious drought*. 6377 feet has been identified as a critical point for the lake's health, and the Water Board Ruling determined that once that lake goes below that level, Los Angeles cannot take water from the creeks. No one knows the impact of global warming, but with this type of vigilance in effect, we should have a Mono Lake for the foreseeable future. I recommend you go see it.

Ecosystem
Even apart from its stunning beauty and location, this is no ordinary lake. Few creatures can survive in water as salty and alkaline as Mono. The lake has no fish. But the few species that do live here "thrive in astronomical numbers".

The food chain begins with the decayed organic matter - detritus - that washes down from the mountains. Green algae, a microscopic one-celled plant, grows on the detritus and the sunlight. Then the two giants of the Mono Lake ecosystem - the brine shrimp and the alkali fly (which sounds like a nursery rhyme to me) - feast on the algae. And that's it for Mono Lake's permanent inhabitants.

But the numbers! Some seven trillion brine shrimp live in Mono Lake at their annual peak. Two generations hatch per summer; all die by winter, but not before laying their eggs for the next year's population. An industrial fishing operation harvests nearly 250 tons of shrimp every year for fish food and doesn't put a dent in the population.

The alkali flies are restricted to the shoreline so there are only millions of them. Several generations hatch each year and some survive the winter. They hover in pervasive clusters on the beach but famously avoid even touching humans. You're ready to find them annoying but they defy you.

This rudimentary year-round population is augmented mightily by winged transients two million strong - more than eighty species of migratory birds - that stop at Mono Lake each spring and summer to fatten up on the munificent shrimp and fly population. This makes Mono Lake one of the most significant shorebird habitats in the western United States. Over 1.5 million eared grebes and nearly 100,000 phalaropes (both Wilson's and red-necked) use the lake. About 50,000 adult California gulls fly to Mono Lake from the coast each spring to nest. (While I have not seen it in person, one of the Visitor Center films shows a gull running down the beach, vacuuming up the flies into its beak.) Mono Lake was also a legendary place for waterfowl before the diversions destroyed the freshwater areas at the creek mouths. A rising lake is witnessing their gradual comeback.

Tufa Towers

The most unique feature of Mono Lake are the tufa towers that emerge from the lake or linger by the shoreline in spectacular shapes of elegant design. Tufa towers are the primary scenic wonder of the lake, certainly as measured by postcards and popular visitor stops. So what are they, anyway? The short answer is limestone, the chemical combination of calcium and carbonate. A better answer is petrified springs. Freshwater springs bubble up from beneath the lake, its calcium merging with the lake's dissolved carbonates to produce lime. If not quickly washed away by wave action this lime will calcify and begin to form a tower.

While tufa itself can form anywhere these substances mix, tufa towers are by definition formed underwater. Since the lake has been shrinking for millennia, tufa towers can be found high on the Mono basin, though they must erode relatively easily as there aren't a lot of them up there. But since the beginning of water diversion a great number of towers has been exposed both in and along the lake. More than visual oddities, the tufa towers serve the function of trees in this largely treeless environment. Weasels, owls, mice and squirrels make homes in the towers. To protect exposed tufa and other natural features California designated the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve in 1982 on the land it owns below 6417' elevation. In 1984, Congress designated the 116,000 acre Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area.

A boardwalk extending out from Mono County Park enters the Tufa Reserve to viewpoints out over the lake. The walk passes by excellent tufa towers standing surreally in the tall grass. Signs along the way identify where the shoreline had been just decades earlier, before Los Angeles started shrinking the lake. The intervals are impressive; it's a lot of lost lake.

Tufa Goblins

Tufa Tower (August 2008)

Tufa and Rabbitbrush

Tufa (August 2008)

More Wonders: Volcanoes

While Mono Basin is flanked on the west by the Sierra Nevada, it is otherwise almost entirely surrounded by volcanoes, some of very recent origin. The Mono domes are the most prominent, a chain some twenty-seven rholitic and pumice volcanoes extending in an arc for some ten miles to the south of Mono Lake. The chain began erupting some 35,000 years ago but most of the domes are less than 10,000 years old and many are less than 2,000, making it the youngest volcanic chain in North America.

Crater Mountain is the highest, at 9,172 feet - 2,400 feet above the valley - and is also among the oldest, sitting with the other oldest in the middle of the range. The youngest volcanoes are 600-700 years old and are situated at either end, suggesting the chain is extending in both directions. The youngest of all the Mono Domes is Panum Crater, which erupted 650 years ago. It is the easiest to access by foot, from a trail off Highway 120 just three miles east off Highway 395 south of Lee Vining. A short hike up through sagebrush takes you to this volcano, an effort I have not yet made.

Two volcanic islands named Negit and Paoha emerge from Mono Lake itself, adding visual complexity to the sea of blue. Negit was formed in several different volcanic explosions from 1,700 to 300 years ago. Paoha Island, a conspicuous white island, is the youngest volcanic feature in the Mono Basin, erupting some 200-300 hears ago. About 2 x 1.5 miles around and rising to 6,670 feet above sea level, it is by far the larger of the two. It is white because most of its surface rock is not volcanic at all, but lake bottom sediments pushed up through the lake by the underlying volcanic intrusion.

These and other smaller islands are very important for bird nesting and the lowering lake levels raised an enormous problem. Negit Island was historically a popular nesting ground for sea gulls, but once the lake was lowered to less than 6375 or so, a land bridge emerged to connect Negit with the lake shore. Coyotes and other land predators quickly seized the opportunity to enjoy free pickings in the rocky nests. While the water level has frequently risen high enough to submerge the land bridge, the gulls continue to stay away from Negit Island, choosing instead some of the smaller islets in the lake. The California Board ruled that Los Angeles cannot divert water if the lake drops to a level approaching the opening of the land bridge, but again, the California Water Board cannot make it snow.

Mono Domes

Paoha Island

III

After about three hours I had done pretty much everything there was to do at the Visitors Center. I had to go out and brave the not-all-that-bad weather. First I hiked a mile and a half down to the beach at the Old Marina (saving $3 parking fee for my efforts), where a lakeside resort had flourished before the lake's drawdown. It's a fine trail through the sagebrush-rabbitbrush community, with constant views of the lake. The trail's main feature is an old tufa tower called Ice House Tufa that looked to me like a dwelling I imagine my ancestors inhabiting. At the beach I strolled the David Gaines Memorial Boardwalk, named after the environmentalist apparently most responsible for lifting the plight of Mono Lake from obscurity to a cause celebre. This was an overcast afternoon, which had its own merits, but in 2008 I came to the beach for sunrise (boy, those were the days), and I have included a photo from that glorious morning.

Ice House Tufa

Mono Lake From Old Marina

Sunrise Mono Lake (August 2008)

Properly warmed up from the climb back to the Visitor Center, I started down the trail to the Lee Vining Creek delta, in its early stages of recovery after the devastation incurred by the water diversion. Nearly all the riparian vegetation had died in the dried-out creek, and severe flooding scoured the channel on those occasions the mountains produced more meltwater than the Los Angeles Aqueduct could absorb. When healthy, the river delta was a spectacular habitat for waterfowl, which flourished in the fresh water/saline water mixture but abandoned the lake entirely once the creeks were gone. Alas, I didn't make it all the to the delta. I got as far as a good overview of the riparian zone, but the skies were getting grayer and my heart just wasn't in it. I turned around and right away it began to rain.

Lee Vining Creek Riparian Zone

So I drove back to South Tufa Beach, where I ended most of my days while camping along Lee Vining Creek. It is managed by the forest service so my senior access pass covered the $3 fee. More importantly, it was the last accessible place around the lake where the late afternoon sun would shine, at least when it was shining at all. I had dinner there several times, strolled the beach elbow to elbow with the photographers, and watched the sunset behind the mountains. It was a strange and beautiful landscape. Here look, I took some pictures.

A light dinner at Mono Lake (Mono Domes in Background)

South Tufa Beach

South Tufa Beach

South Tufa Beach

South Tufa Beach (with a nod to  Martin Johnson Heade)

* As I write this in January 2017, the Sierra Nevada is receiving a phenomenal amount of snow. The lake had risen by six inches before the latest storm, and the increased snowpack likely augers well for both the lake and the Los Angeles water supply, at least for the short term.

References

Obviously, I did not gather all of this information in one visit to the Visitor Center. The following sources were the ones I drew upon the most. There are many others I haven't gotten to.

Geology of the Sierra Nevada by Mary Hill (University of California, 2006)

Geology Underfoot in Death Valley and Owens Valley by Allen F. Glazner and Robert P. Sharp (Mountain Press 1997)

Storm Over Mono: The Mono Lake Battle and the California Water Future by John Hart (University of California Press 1996

The Mono Lake Website of the Mono Lake Committee http://www.monolake.org/

Tioga Pass

Mine Creek -  September 28, 2016 - Inyo National Forest - Hoover Wilderness Area 

Yosemite National Park encompasses the upper watersheds of two rivers draining the west slopes of the Sierra Nevada. The Merced River drains the park's southeast mountains before flowing famously through Yosemite Valley. The Tuolumne River, less famous though far from obscure, drains the more northern peaks through Tuolumne Meadows before cutting a canyon down to Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, the infamous water source for the city of San Francisco.

Highway 120, better known as the Tioga Pass Road, follows the Tuolumne River through Tuolumne Meadows to Tioga Pass. At 9943 feet, this is the highest highway pass in the Sierras and is also the border between Yosemite and Inyo National Forest. The pass itself is barely perceptible, the road dropping only slightly as it heads east into national forest land. This high country just outside Yosemite is one of my favorite parts of the Sierra Nevada, or any other mountain range for that matter.

I arrived rather late in the season for such a high altitude. Nighttime lows were forecast to drop into the low 30s or upper 20s. The days were lovely though so I took one of the last sites available at Junction Campground (9600') in order to get in one hike. On my last visit, eight years earlier, I hiked into what is known as 20 Lakes Basin. Actually I hiked there twice. This time I headed up Mine Creek, the next drainage over to the west.

The hike starts straight out of the campground, always nice. The trail is signed “Bennettville”, as the first mile leads to the sparse remains of a nineteenth-century mining town, the attraction for most people. But beyond Bennettville the trail heads quickly and easily out of the trees and in no time emerges into an extraordinary basin of lakes, the imposing granite of Mount Conness, White Mountain, and North Peak luring from the distance. I immediately thought and not for the first time how easy Sierra hikers can have it compared to those in the Cascades. I know there is plenty of tough hiking in the Sierras, but quick jaunts to landscapes like this are far from uncommon.

Bennettville

Mine Creek

Shell Lake

The weather was spectacular. Lush grass surrounded Shell Lake. Some autumn tints flashed in the hills and bits of snow prevailed on the higher slopes. Mine Creek is a narrow little treat, running free of impoundment. It is a tributary of Lee Vining Creek, though, so its waters go on to produce electricity at the power station in Lee Vining Canyon before being diverted, most of it anyway, to the Los Angeles Aqueduct for the long ride to that city's water supply.

I met a couple of people heading up the trail with fishing poles, saying the creek held a lot of trout. I soon saw what they meant and was indeed taken, both by their numbers and their size. There were buckets of them and they were tiny, hardly fish at all. They were so close to the bank and to each other that I figured it would be more efficient to just dip a net and scoop some out. You'd need a few of them if you were looking for dinner. I don't know if that would be sporting or even legal; I never did take up fishing.

  

It was lake after lake - Shell Lake, Fantail Lake, Finger Lake, Spuller Lake - I lost track.

Eventually the trail gave out along with the Mine Creek watershed. I did a little climbing and looked down on more lakes - Maul, Green Treble - lying at the base of the Conness-Black granite wall. I could also see Saddlebag Lake to the east, its small dam, the red rock imposing above its banks. I saw that I could come into this basin from that direction as well. Prospects for future visits!

Saddlebag Dam (got to look close)

It was easy pickings down into a wetlands area still quite wet in late September. I figured this was good news for our drought-stricken Californians, though I don't really know what would be considered normal. Maybe this should still have been snow.

At this point I wasn't really trying to get anywhere. It was now a hike to wander and absorb. I circled around another lake or two, then began climbing back up toward the Mine Creek divide. I was surprised to find myself short of breath and rather exhausted, just from strolling around some easy meadows. It dawned on me that I had been over 10,000 feet the entire day, in the sun the whole time, and that elevation and exposure had taken their toll. So much for my Cascadian condescension.

I found some shade and rested a bit, looking back over the lakes toward the way I came in, with the Tioga Pass peaks and Mount Dana in the background. By this time the beautiful day was showing some cracks; it was getting downright cloudy. I started my dawdle back in a light sprinkle, taking time to look more closely at the rocks. Somehow it had become more autumnal over the course of the day. Goodbye to Bennettville and back to the tent for a cold night.

Bennettville

Tuolumne Meadows and River - September 29 and 30, 2016 - Yosemite National Park

To gain a modicum of warmth I moved to Yosemite's Porcupine Flat campground - 1,500 feet lower than Junction - and spent the next couple of days kicking around the Tuolumne Meadows and river. Tuolumne Meadows really is strolling unless you choose to climb one of the many domes distant or near. Wandering the river in its late season sluggishness, with Lembert Dome the obvious focal point, Dana and Gibbs peaks in the background. Conifer saplings revealed that Tuolumne Meadows, like all meadows, is temporary.

Lembert Dome

Lembert Dome, Dana Peak, Mount Gibbs

Tuolumne River, Lembert Dome

Conifers on the march

The next day I set out on the Glen Aulin Trail following the Tuolumne River downstream.The first several miles are a mostly flat stretch of pulverized granite, and I found it a bit enervating. I have trouble with flat trails. I finally got to one exciting stretch of trail etched into a granite cliff, but saw the next leg was a descent to the waterfalls that are the essence of the hike and decided this was not the day for that. I just didn't have it in me. So I retreated to a lovely spot where the river pools up before plunging down a narrows. It must be quite tumultuous in high water, but this was low water so I got to play around with the patterns on the river bed.

Tuolumne River

Tuolumne River

Tuolumne River Bed

Glen Aulin Trail 

I was enjoying a late breakfast at the campground when out of the bush popped a park ranger. First she chided me for wandering too far from my picnic cooler. You're supposed to keep within arm's length of them and try sometime to prepare dinner that way. Then she told me a storm was coming in, snow and wind, possibly closing the road. I would have to pick up and drop down lower, down into Lee Vining Canyon. I might still get snowed on but at least I wouldn't be stranded in Yosemite.