HIGH SIERRRA

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By Duncan King

Afloat on Mono Lake

Wherever you want to go boating on Mono Lake, the launch at Navy Beach is where to start. Flotillas of watercraft assemble here in the mornings for their short visits around the shoreline or their more adventurous trips out to the islands. Under the protective eye of seemingly the state’s entire population of California gulls, the short portage of your craft from the parking lot to the launch area is carefully studied for dropped food items. The Sierra views are awesome and any photographer in your party will need careful watching in case they wander off forgeting their boating chores.

Mono Lake is the gem of the eastern Sierra, lying at the foot of Tioga Pass a few miles outside the boundary of Yosemite National Park and just east of the town of Lee Vining. Here basin and range country slam hard against the sheer eastern scarp of the Sierra Nevada. This is where creeks have nurtured the lake in the Mono basin for nearly one million years. Only Lake Tahoe in North America is older.
Mark Twain observed, “Half a dozen little mountain brooks run into Mono Lake, but not a stream of any kind flows out of it. What it does with its surplus water is a dark and bloody mystery.” We now know that until 60 years ago the only check and balance on the water level was the evaporation caused by the desert’s heat and low humidity but then Los Angeles started creek diversions to relieve slake on the thirst of southern California and the lake’s level plummeted.

Around the launch area, on land and in the water are tufa towers (think open-air stalagmites) formed where calcium rich springs have bubbled up through the alkaline waters of the lake and precipitated calcium carbonate in richly textured columns as the lake’s level has fluctuated over the years. The resulting towers give the area a surreal appearance, magnified by the image of the Sierra Nevada to the west and the stark desert basin to the east.

This area is so other worldly that today’s Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity are using technology developed underwater at Mono Lake for remote control and rock and fossil sampling and analysis.

If you head straight out into lake, 30 minutes paddling will bring you to four cream colored scrawny knobs of tufa with magnificently scruffy nests on top, visible markers of ospreys’ success in raising their young. During the breeding season, April to August, this area and that of the islands further out, is off limits in which case, early spring or fall are the preferred times to visit.

Heading out further toward the islands you cannot fail to notice the tiny shrimp, displaced by the thousands with each stroke of your paddle. A handful of water scooped up shows the small creatures sculling with their feathery fronds to move through the liquid. These shrimp, and the alkali flies that inhabit the shoreline, feed on the algae that the lake supports and are the major life forms in the lake. Unfortunately, for the trout in the creeks who would love to grab this easy food source, the water is too salty and alkaline for fish.

Birds on the Pacific Flyway love this fast food feast and though the menu may be restricted, the harvest of flies and shrimp is enormous as demonstrated by a local company that used to process 250 tons of shrimp a year for dry fish-food. 1.5 million Eared grebes, 80,000 Wilson’s phalaropes, 60,000 Red-necked phalaropes and 60,000 California gulls (85% of California’s breeding population) gorge themselves on the lake’s easy picking protein.

There are numerous islands in the lake with Paoha and Negit being the most prominent. Paoha, the white one, is only 300 years old and looks like the lake bottom sediment it is comprised of. The smaller Negit resembles a black submarine lying there with its conning tower poking up. It is the older sibling at 1,700 years of age. The recent appearance of both in the lake is testimony to the ongoing volcanism that defines the area.

Mammoth Mountain, 30 miles to the south. It is noted for its skiing yet, is one big eruption waiting to happen. Hot springs abound throughout the basin and any cool morning will reveal wisps of steam from numerous locations. The most famous is Hot Creek just off Highway 395. Here, scalding springs push up through the icy creek waters and after bathers have judiciously chosen their spot, they can fine tune the temperature by wiggling their toes in the sandy bottom to adjust the flow!

About 200 yards from Paoha, big up-wellings of bubbles reveal springs below and as you round the south-east corner of the island, you pass steaming patches of water from Hot Springs Cove. Last century there was an attempt to capitalize on this as a health spa but it came all to naught. Earlier settlers on the island had also tried chicken and goat farming, but with mixed results.

The island’s raw state is well illustrated after you land and try to explore across a scrunchy beach and trudge through almost impenetrable brush, banging your boots against primitive fractured rock and obsidian chunks scattered amongst armchair sized volcanic bomb blasts.

Inland on Paoha is a tree trunk about 50 feet above the current water level. It is saltily preserved and serves as a reminder that the lake was recently much deeper and accordingly, larger. Over the millennia, the lake has expanded and receded naturally, but in the 1940’s the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power decided that the water in creeks leading to Mono Lake would be better serving a rapacious population and agricultural industry over 300 miles away. This was better than merely running into a supposedly sterile desert basin. The inspirational David versus Goliath story of the battle led by David Gaines to save the lake can be followed at the Mono Lake Committee Information Center and Bookstore, Highway 395 in Lee Vining.

California travelers who enjoy geocaching, a trendy hiątech hide and seek hobby, may prefer to use global positioning system receivers. There are a growing number of hobbyists who travel to these places in order to find where integer degrees of latitude and longitude intersect. There are numerous worthwhile caches in the Mono basin including one on Paoha. A few hundred yards east of Paoha lies a degree confluence of location, 38╝N 119╝W. From here, there is a great view of Black Point to the north, a basaltic volcano that erupted under the waters of the lake some 13,000 years ago with Mono Craters to the south, North America’s youngest mountain range which last emerged 600 years ago.

Negit lies just north of Paoha with even more evidence of its turbulent volcanic birth. As the lake level dropped thanks to LA’s DWP, Negit was relegated to a promontory and its gull population crashed, as coyotes came over the newly formed land bridge, ready to dine on the gull eggs and chicks in their nests. Thanks to David Gaines and the MLC, Negit is once again an island and in his recognition of his legacy, there is now Gaines Island in the lake. East is the islet of Krakatoa, named after the film Krakatoa, East of Java, made there in 1953.

Camping is allowed on the islands outside of the breeding season and it is a likely spot for boaters to overnight there. The south-west afternoon winds of 20-30 mph can kick a vicious chop into the faces of paddlers trying to get back to Navy Beach, an appropriate caution as you consider that the origin of its name comes from tests that the military carried out using explosives making miniature tsunamis in the 1960’s!

Visitors to the islands need to keep an eye on the lake surface all the time in case the wind starts to pick up, and all intending boaters MUST check in with the rangers at the Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area Visitor Center before setting out. Powered craft can have trouble pounding into the chop heading back to shore, as well. Even when you have made it safely back, everything, including you and your clothes, will be covered with spray that dries to a thick white coating of Mono Lake salts. Ironically, the wind often dies away at dusk and the lake returns to its flat calm.

Duncan King is a freelance writer and contributor to California Tour & Travel Magazine living in Cupertino, CA
Email- nosmog@aol.com

Sierra Foothills South / Kern River Valley

Hooked on nature and want to visit someplace new? How about engaging in the outdoors and experiencing the amazing diversity of wildlife and vegetation found in Kern County, California’s Kern River Valley. Join Valley residents and visitors for the 10th Annual Kern Valley Bioregions Festival April 30-May 2nd and post-Festival field trips May 3rd-6th, for a sampling of recreational and educational opportunities available in region richly abundant in flora and fauna.

Hundreds of festival attendees travel from all parts of California and beyond to spend the weekend with experts in the field, mostly local residents, who volunteer their time to lead field trips, staff exhibits, or give instruction. Go birding, hiking, rafting, fishing, studying roadside geology, star gazing, observing Native American heritage, wildflower walking, viewing reptile and amphibian exhibits and wildlife art, or take a nature photography workshop, just a partial list of ways to connect with the Kern River Valley’s natural world. Audubon-California’s 1127 acre Kern River Preserve, a sponsor and staging area for many of the festival events, lies within the South Fork Kern River Valley near the southern terminus of the Sierra Nevada. Elevation is moderate, ranging from 2600 to 2700 feet and the high water table and rich soils support a dense growth of riparian (streamside) trees and shrubs. Riparian vegetation and the insects it harbors are critical in sustaining migrating and resident bird populations and other animals. The Preserve protects one of the largest riparian forests remaining in California, as over 90% of state’s riparian habitat has been destroyed due to agriculture and development.

According to Bob Barnes, Outreach Director for Kern River Preserve, plant and animal communities which normally are not found in contact with each other, coexist in the Kern River Valley. Surrounded by mountains: the Southern Sierra, Piute, and Greenhorn ranges, the valley is home (within a 15 mile radius) to five distinct biomes or bioregions which intersect, supporting a diverse range of living organisms unmatched anywhere in the United States. The five bioregions are: the Central Valley grasslands, the Kern River’s riparian areas (streamside vegetation), foothills chaparral, Great Basin and Mojave Deserts, and Sierra Nevada.

Due to the area’s unique geography, approximately 2,000 species of plants, nearly one-third of the state’s total, are found here. These various plant communities support an equally impressive number of animals. National Audubon Society says over 115 mammal species can be found, the highest diversity within the United States and Canada and the region is home to 138 butterflies, over half of the state’s known species.

Located on the Pacific Flyway, one of the four major routes followed by migratory birds, the Kern River Valley has been listed as a globally important birding area and hosts 330+ species through the year. At last year’s festival, over 200 species were tallied, including a California Condor. Birding field trips are offered throughout the week, visiting numerous regions within the Valley and are limited to between five and twenty people in order to be as meaningful and educational as possible. Details on times and prices of trips are listed on the Valley Wild website.

In today’s world of too much pavement and too many parking lots with big box shopping centers popping up like crabgrass, even in rural communities, it is encouraging to see the Kern River Valley citizens protecting the wildness and open space which surrounds them. Residents and visitors to the area treasure the valley’s relaxed lifestyle with friendly people, a unique natural environment, and abundance of outdoor recreational opportunities.

Luckily the community is establishing a plan for future growth which recognizes the importance of preserving the area’s unique biological diversity and understands the financial and psychological benefits that accompany sustainable development. With the world’s biodiversity dwindling, it’s comforting to see people of the Valley working towards protecting their quality of life. Kern River Valley and the Bioregions From Orange County, Santa Barbara- 4 hours. From Las Vegas, Palm Springs, San Diego, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose-6 hours.