lambertiana
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2000
- Messages
- 9,312
One of my hiking friends has been itching to get out, but his work schedule makes it impossible to do anything more than an overnight. So Thursday after work we headed to Mineral King in Sequoia NP, to go to White Chief Bowl/Canyon. He had to be back down in the valley by 5PM the following night, so time was short.
I always like the views of Sawtooth that open up as you get close to Mineral King:
As we drove higher and higher, we started to see evidence of rain earlier in the day, and not just a light rain. Then we saw sheeting streams of water coming down the large granite faces...something was up. And just below the trailhead, we could see what was normally a gentle crystal clear creek in the canyon bottom had turned into a torrent of muddy water:
Right at the trailhead we encountered this little guy:
Shortly after we left the trailhead it got dark, but we kept encountering evidence of very heavy rain. Creeks were raging and there were many places where torrents of water had washed out sections of trail. Higher, we encountered areas where there was pea-sized hail covering the ground up to a couple inches deep. But the storm had spent itself and it did not rain on us. We finally stopped for the night, not sure if we were near where we wanted to make camp (neither of us had been to White Chief before).
We got up the next morning to clear blue skies. Looking up the canyon:
One thing I like about Mineral King is the geologic diversity. While most of the Sierra is a hodgepodge of different granite and granodiorite plutons, looking very uniform from a distance, Mineral King is at a contact zone between granite and granodiorite plutons and the original overburden. In this view looking across the drainage from our camp, you can see the top is gray granodiorite, the middle is brilliant white marble, and the bottom is dark rust-colored slate/phyllite/argillaceous hornfels.
In the middle of that picture you can see the entrance to White Chief Mine, which we would explore later that day. At the top of the ridge on the right is the bowl where White Chief Lake is found, and our destination for the morning. And as we sat in camp, we noticed that the stream on the left side seemed to appear from nowhere...something to investigate.
As we started toward White Chief Lake, we got to that stream right by a nice waterfall:
And just above that waterfall, the mystery was solved. The stream came out of a cave:
Mineral King is well known for the karst found in the limestone and marble there. As we continued up, we found many caves that dropped straight down and out of sight. The pictures do not convey the depth, the caves went down out of sight, who knows how deep they are:
It didn't take long to get to where we could see into the upper part of White Chief canyon:
We then continued upward, traversing the boulder field and granodiorite slabs until we finally reached White Chief Lake:
I always like the views of Sawtooth that open up as you get close to Mineral King:
As we drove higher and higher, we started to see evidence of rain earlier in the day, and not just a light rain. Then we saw sheeting streams of water coming down the large granite faces...something was up. And just below the trailhead, we could see what was normally a gentle crystal clear creek in the canyon bottom had turned into a torrent of muddy water:
Right at the trailhead we encountered this little guy:
Shortly after we left the trailhead it got dark, but we kept encountering evidence of very heavy rain. Creeks were raging and there were many places where torrents of water had washed out sections of trail. Higher, we encountered areas where there was pea-sized hail covering the ground up to a couple inches deep. But the storm had spent itself and it did not rain on us. We finally stopped for the night, not sure if we were near where we wanted to make camp (neither of us had been to White Chief before).
We got up the next morning to clear blue skies. Looking up the canyon:
One thing I like about Mineral King is the geologic diversity. While most of the Sierra is a hodgepodge of different granite and granodiorite plutons, looking very uniform from a distance, Mineral King is at a contact zone between granite and granodiorite plutons and the original overburden. In this view looking across the drainage from our camp, you can see the top is gray granodiorite, the middle is brilliant white marble, and the bottom is dark rust-colored slate/phyllite/argillaceous hornfels.
In the middle of that picture you can see the entrance to White Chief Mine, which we would explore later that day. At the top of the ridge on the right is the bowl where White Chief Lake is found, and our destination for the morning. And as we sat in camp, we noticed that the stream on the left side seemed to appear from nowhere...something to investigate.
As we started toward White Chief Lake, we got to that stream right by a nice waterfall:
And just above that waterfall, the mystery was solved. The stream came out of a cave:
Mineral King is well known for the karst found in the limestone and marble there. As we continued up, we found many caves that dropped straight down and out of sight. The pictures do not convey the depth, the caves went down out of sight, who knows how deep they are:
It didn't take long to get to where we could see into the upper part of White Chief canyon:
We then continued upward, traversing the boulder field and granodiorite slabs until we finally reached White Chief Lake:
