On to the Owens, my favorite ‘lower 48’ valley. To get there though I must take Route 190 through the west part of the park and it was closed this morning due to ice and snow in a mountain pass. I stop at the ranger station to check the status - it has been reopened. Yay! What a great road to drive, all twisty and turny with roller coaster ups and downs, and always surrounded by beautiful lonely desert scenery as far as the eye can see that changes with the elevation – everything from creosote bush and mesquite to sage and Joshua trees.
After leaving Death Valley I head north on I-395 through the Owens Valley, the deepest mountain valley in the lower 48 states. In the town of Lone Pine, the elevation rises from 3,733 feet in the center of town to 14,505 feet on the summit of Mount Whitney – that’s an almost 11,000 foot difference!
I can’t help but be in a great mood – I-395 is one of the most scenic drives anywhere and I do love it so. To my left the incomparable Sierra-Nevada Mountains loom like a massive, impressive 400-mile long snow-covered stone wall; several peaks including Whitney top out at over 14,000 feet.
To my right the Inyo–White Mountain ranges rise to similar lofty heights (White Mountain tops out at 14,242 feet) but that is about all they have in common, they are arid, brown and look more like big, soft rounded hills than mountains providing a nice contrast to the Sierras.
I can’t help but be in a great mood – I-395 is one of the most scenic drives anywhere and I do love it so. To my left the incomparable Sierra-Nevada Mountains loom like a massive, impressive 400-mile long snow-covered stone wall; several peaks including Whitney top out at over 14,000 feet.
To my right the Inyo–White Mountain ranges rise to similar lofty heights (White Mountain tops out at 14,242 feet) but that is about all they have in common, they are arid, brown and look more like big, soft rounded hills than mountains providing a nice contrast to the Sierras.
The Sierras rise muscularly from the valley floor, an impressive escarpment of towering jagged granite spires. They catch and wring out moist Pacific breezes; hundreds of green river and creek corridors spill out of these mountains. Some places in the Sierras regularly receive more than 500 inches of snowfall per year; the town of Tamarack once recorded 884 inches in one winter! That’s 73.7 feet! Another year they received 390 inches of snow in just one month – that’s an average of 13 inches every day in that month!The Inyo–White Mountains by contrast are in the rain shadow of the Sierras and receive on average less than 12 inches of precipitation a year, most of which arrives as snow in the winter. On a summer's day the amount of precipital moisture in the air is about half a millimeter, the lowest ever recorded anywhere on earth. But these very hardships contribute to these mountains producing trees so old they surpass the majestic Giant Sequoia of the Sierra by more than a millennium! The bristlecone pines are in fact the oldest trees on earth - a specimen of this species nicknamed "Methuselah", is 4,700 years old! Its exact location is kept secret, since an even older specimen, nicknamed "Prometheus", was cut down in 1964.
I practically have ‘The Owens’ to myself. Not many people travel here at this time of year (with one exception, those traveling to ski at Mammoth Ski Resort) because mountain access is limited at best; most of the roads that go up and into the Sierras are now closed, buried in snow and will not reopen until June. But I have no intention of going up into the mountains, I just want to camp at their base and admire them. In my opinion, this is the best time of year to see them, when they’re wearing their full winter coat - from late spring through fall, they look blotchy, kind of like an animal shedding its winter coat.
Next: Wasting Film – Just Can’t Help Myself!
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