A WEEK IN THE SIERRA PART II

By far the greatest of all these ranges is the Sierra Nevada, a long and massive uplift lying between the arid deserts of the Great Basin and the Californian exuberance of grain-field and orchard; its eastern slope, a defiant wall of rock plunging abruptly down to the plain; the western, a long, grand sweep. Well-watered and overgrown with cool, stately forests; its crest a line of sharp, snowy peaks springing into the sky and catching the alpenglow long after the sun has set for all the rest of America. --- Clarence King

Each morning I'd peel open my tent fly and look out over the stillness of Pleasant Lake. I was at the far end of the peninsula on a flat spot, a stone's throw from a small cove less than a hundred yards wide. It was an easy swim back and forth, that I had done the day before. On the other side, a granite white and grey wall rise out of the water. The fissures and cracks in it made it look like a high-rise apartment. Its mirrored reflection in the water doubled its size. In the shadows of the morning, the wall appeared to glow.
The sun hadn't peaked over the ridge of Sierra just yet. The moon was fading into the western skies. My tent inhaled the cool dawn air as I climbed out of the tangle of my sleeping bags and put on my pullover and stocking hat.
I had the same feeling that naturalist John Muir described best on a July day in his book My First Summer in the Sierra, "Exhilarated with the mountain air, I feel like shouting this morning with excess of wild animal joy."
 

Paddling Pleasant Lake

It's a bit too early for shouting. Whispers were more in order, as I zigzagged through the brush and the hardier little Sierra Junipers trees and leaping sagebrush lizards to our Bayside Adventure Sports campsite. Where I found John Taylor already boiling a kettle of water. Nothing better to start the day than with a little pore over coffee. We've been bringing these faith-based groups from Bayside Adventure Sports for a week of outback camping to Loon Lake in the Crystal Basin Recreation Area for five years. As Muir put it so elegantly and simply, "And into the forest, I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” Our participants always return to the flatlands, refreshed and recharged.

Paddling along the granite shore of the lake

Throughout the week, during morning and sunset paddles on the upper part of Pleasant Lake, we'd explore the narrow coves, bays, and polished granite formations. Paddling here, one can see the mountains' history, through the stories left behind in the rock.

When Padre Pedro Font named the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1776, they had already been around for a long, long time. The ice- and snow-covered sharp saw-bladed peaks, the Spanish padre, saw had begun forming under the ocean about 100 million years ago. Beneath the surface of the earth, the granitic rocks formed from molten rock that gradually solidified. Powerful geological forces then gradually forced the landmass up under the waters of the Pacific Ocean and below an advancing North American continent. As a result, plumes of plutonic rock were pushed up towards the surface, and sheets of lava poured down the slopes of volcanic chimneys rising to the surface.

 
  

Exploring the many coves of the lake

About 50 million later, the volcanoes were extinct. The erosive agents like wind, rain, and frost ate away the softer sediments exposing the salt-and-pepper speckled Granitic rocks containing minerals including quartz, feldspars, and micas.

As the world grew colder, beginning about 2 or 3 million years ago, the Sierra Nevada mountains were coated with an extensive thick mantle of ice. It covered much of the higher altitudes and sent massive ice-crawling glaciers down its valleys. The glacial ice quarried loosed and transported vast volumes of rubble along the way, scouring and transforming the landscape that we see today.

Paddling by the polish white granite boulders, it's easy to see the evidence of the path of the last glacier. Deep grooves are carved into the rock, and erratic and huge slabs of rock are left behind and out of place in a natural balancing act. To our delight, flat smooth polished boulders at the water's edge are perfect for sunbathing and drying off on a hot day after jumping into the cool lake.
 

At sunset the mountains of the Sierra glow red 

Only the bravest trees succeed in the summit crags along the lake, despite struggling against the wind and snow. We see the Sierra junipers growing on tops and ridges and in the splits between the glacier pavements of granite. Muir called them a sturdy highlander, "Seemingly content to live for more than a score of centuries on sunshine and snow...Surely the most enduring of all the tree mountaineers, it never seems to die a natural death."
Nestled in these trees and granite walls of the Sierra are these man-made reservoirs like Loon Lake and Pleasant Lake. After years of construction, they are part of the mountain landscape. These once meadows, canyons, and riverbeds are now glimmering lakes ready to explore and make part of a new history.

On our evening trek around the lake, we were able to paddle into a picturesque pond filled with blooming water lilies protected by steep walls on all three sides. It was only because the water level was still higher than normal this time of year that we were able to see the beautiful yellow flowers in all their glory in our kayaks.

  

A hidden coves reveals blooming water lilies

We paddled back to our camp in the twilight. The sky was ablaze with brilliant golden skies and orange-tinted mountains.
Back at camp, we lay on our backs staring up at the star-filled sky just as Muir did over a century ago. "How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountain-top, it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make leaves and moss-like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone," wrote Muir, " " We all dwell in a house of one room – the world with the firmament for its roof and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track.”

At 6,378 feet, we had no trouble seeing the heavens. We were dazzled by the Starlink satellites, a moving train of bright dots traveling across the sky. Blown away by an amazing streaking meteor that burned across the sky, from horizon to horizon, and later overwhelmed by the full moon rising over the silhouetted mountain top. In my tent, I looked over the lake as moonbeams glimmered off the still water before pulling down the fly. In the distant coyotes howling at the moon, I'm sure, with pure wild animal joy.

 

A beautiful sunset ends the day on Pleasant Lake

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