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View from the Bald Mountain lookout. on the north side of the Long Valley caldera. The caldera is a depression left after the eruption of the Bishop Tuff 760,000 years ago. Initial view is across the caldera to the south rim where peaks such as Mt. Morrison (cliffy pyramidal peak just left of center) rise across the faults that dropped Long Valley down. Low wooded hills in front of the snowy Sierra are later volcanic domes that erupted after the main Long Valley eruption. Moving right, a SNEP seismometer's (SNEP 46) solar panel is visible just over the truck. Farther right, the lumpy freestanding peak just left of the phone pole is Mammoth Mountain, a younger dacite dome erupted into the caldera's west rim and home for the Mammoth Mountain ski area. Farther right, San Joaquin Ridge (the Sierran crest) obscures the just visible tops of the Minarets, Mts. Ritter and Banner (which is just right of the snowy summit of San Joaquin Mtn.). Below San Joaquin Ridge, the young volcanic domes of the Inyo Craters remain treeless. Farther right (nearly due west) Mt. Wood's dark slopes rise above the left edge of a pumice-filled meadow; Reversed Creek and the June Lake area are before it but not particularly visible. Farther right past Mt. Lewis is Bloody Canyon and Mono Pass into Yosemite. Mts. Gibbs and Dana are the two summits farther north from Bloody Canyon. Farther right the Sierra diminishes as the Mono Craters come into view; to the right of them Mono Lake is visible under the distant Sweetwater Range. Farther right are the Bodie Hills and the Wassuk Range is in the distance behind a pole. Views to the northeast are dominated by nearby hills with a glimpse of the northern end of the White Mountains. Glass Mountain is the rightmost part of these more local peaks and marks the northeast corner of the caldera. The low ridge to the right from Glass Mountain and behind Lake Crowley is the eastern edge of the caldera with the White Mountains and northernmost Inyo Mountains in the far distance. Farther right the Sierra crest returns in view. June 18, 2006.
C. H. Jones | CIRES | Dept. of Geological Sciences | Univ. of Colorado at Boulder
Last modified at November 11, 2010 8:33 AM Sunday, October 15, 2006 9:33 PM