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Exploring the beautiful nature of California


California Nature: Inyo Mountains


The Inyo Mountains are a short mountain range east of the Sierra Nevada mountains in eastern California. The range separates the Owens Valley to the west with Saline Valley to the east, extending for approximately 70 miles from the southern end of the White Mountains. Geologically, the mountains are a fault block range in the Basin and Range Province, at the western end of the Great Basin. They are considered to be among the most important and best-known Late Proterozoic to Cambrian sections in the United States. Approximately 205,000 acres of the range are designated as the Inyo Mountain Wilderness managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Much of the northern part of the range is within Inyo National Forest. Wildlife in the area includes the endangered Inyo Mountains Salamander and the Desert Bighorn Sheep Plant communities include creosote and sagebrush at lower altitudes, and bristlecone pine forests at higher. A number of rare and endemic plants are adapted to the unique limestone soils of the mountains, including the cliffdweller, bristlecone cryptantha, and Inyo rock daisy.
Inyo mountains in California nature Inyo Mountains Wilderness, at 205,000 acres, is one of the largest wilderness areas designated in the California Desert Bill. This wilderness is one of the most dramatic in the California desert. Rising from 1,000 feet in the dry, hot Saline Valley on the east, the fault-block Inyo Mountains soar to more than 11,000 feet in less than 6.5 miles, creating one of the most spectacular desert ranges in the state. Waucoba Mountain, at 11,125 feet, is the highest point in the wilderness. Several other mountains reach above 11,000 feet, including Keynot Peak and Mount Inyo. Most of the mountains consist of sedimentary rock like limestone, with occasional granitic outcrops. These mountains are steep, with spectacular cliffs and rock exposures, and deep, nearly inaccessible canyons. However, once you gain the crest of the range, the terrain is relatively gentle and rolling. Lower elevations are cloaked in creosote bush, shadscale, and big sagebrush, whereas the higher elevations have limited forest cover of juniper, pinyon pine, and limber pine. Some of the densest and most extensive forests of the rare bristlecone pine in California grow along the mountain crest.
Due to their height, winter snows provide a source of water for a number of perennial streams that cascade down narrow, steep canyons to the valleys on either side of the Inyo range. Some of these streams have a limited amount of riparian vegetation, including cottonwood trees and willows, particularly on the eastside canyons. Ironically, the water often poses a problem for canyon explorers, creating insurmountable waterfalls that form barriers to upstream travel.

The Inyos harbor herds of bighorn sheep and mule deer, plus coyote and mountain lion. An unexpected species found here is the Inyo Mountain salamander, a rare species associated with the riparian zones of some of the canyons including Willow, McElvoy, Hunter, Beverage, Keynot, and Craig.
lots of fossils can be found at the base of the inyo mountains Evidence of old mining efforts are visible throughout the wilderness. Deposits of gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, tungsten, molybdenum, and talc are all known to occur in the range. Many of the dirt roads that penetrate the range lead to abandoned mining sites. One of the most spectacular remnants of this era is a tram in the southern part of the wilderness that was built in 1913 to haul salt from the Saline Valley over the Inyo Mountains to Owens Valley. Considered the steepest in the world, the tram went up Daisy Canyon near Salt Lake in the Saline Valley, and over to Swansea near Owens Lake. The salt was harvested from Salt Lake and was so pure that it required no further refining before sale.

Although the lower elevations are accessible year round, travel at higher elevations is restricted in the winter due to snow. The snow, however, does open up many overnight camping possibilities, particularly later in the spring. By melting snow as a water source, unlimited possibilities exist for longer trips among the higher elevation basins or rolling crest of the range.
An unusual fossil locality occurs east of Owens Lake, near the crest of California's Inyo Mountains, a place many fossil enthusiasts call the Chainman Shale site, where 325-million-year-old ammonoids can be found along the same bedding planes that yield fossil shark teeth and terrestrial plants. The fossil remains have been preserved in what geologists refer to as the Upper Mississippian Chainman Shale, a thick marine deposit, almost everywhere slightly metamorphosed, which also contains several species of pelecypods and brachiopods. The Inyo Mountains fossil horizon lies in the vicinity of Cerro Gordo, an abandoned mining camp that produced millions of dollars' worth of silver, lead and zinc during the latter half of the 1800s. It is now a picturesque ghost town preserved in what is euphemistically termed a state of "arrested decay. Not only is the Cerro Gordo fossil site a productive and scenic area to explore, it is also a place of great paleontological importance. As one of only three known Carboniferous ammonoid localities in all of California, it is also the only one currently accessible to amateur fossil buffs.
 
 
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