Pinchot Pass, Kings Canyon NP

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Hide... Initial view east has Mt. Pinchot to the left with a gentler orange top and Mt. Wynne to the right with a pointed peak. Farther right, the lakes at the headwaters of Woods Creek are seen; directly above them is Colosseum Mtn. To the right of that, the heavily furrowed flank of Mt Cedric Wright just fails to reach the skyline; Mt. Baxter peeks over just left of Cedric Wright's summit. At the farthest right before foreground rocks block the view lies asymmetric Mt. Stanford and more jagged Ericsson Peak, both on the Kings-Kern Divide. Forester Pass is just out of view to the left (east) from Mt. Stanford. Swinging around to the north, Lake Marjorie is the second lake below the pass. A rather indistinguished peak directly above the leftmost part of the nearest lake is Mt. Ickes. Above Lake Marjorie on the horizon as a black smudge is the Black Divide, with Mt. Goddard its high point to the right. Mt. Ruskin is the high point to the right of Mt. Goddard. Vennacher Needle is halfway from Mt. Ruskin to the dark rocks of the Palisades, where North Palisade is on the left and Mt. Sill on the right. Mather Pass is just out of view below Mt. Sill.

Geologically, starting from the north, the dark rocks of the Black Divide are metavolcanic rocks from some of the earliest times there were volcanoes in this area. The darker rocks of the Palisades are mainly ~105 Ma Inconsolable Quartz Monzodiorite, which has ample inclusions of darker diorites. The lighter rocks of the Upper Basin of the South Fork are mainly Cartridge Pass Granodiorite while the slightly darker 91-94 Ma Lamarck Granodiorite dominates closer to the pass. The ~95 Ma McDoogle Quartz Monzodiorite is at the pass and is one of the oldest parts of the Muir Intrusive Suite, which includes the Lamarck Granodiorite and extends north to nearly Mammoth. Colorful rocks around the pass are metamorphosed sedimentary rocks predating the massive igneous activity the region experienced in the Mesozoic. To the south, nearly all the rocks from Mt. Cedric Wright to the right are older Jurassic intrusive rocks shot through with mafic dikes presumed to be part of the 148 Ma Independence dike swarm. The more distant peaks on the Kings-Kern Divide are from the Paradise Granodiorite portion of the younger Whitney Intrusive sequence.

Glacial features are widespread; in particular, the presence of glacial trim lines outlines the upper reaches of glacial action (these are cliffs at the base of well-defined avalanche chutes). Although these are fairly high (and the pass was clearly overtopped by ice), avalanche chutes extend to surprisingly low elevations on Mt. Cedric Wright, either indicating a rapid drop in the top of glacial ice or an unusually effective Holocene avalanche environment on that peak.