Forester Pass, Sequoia & Kings Canyon NPs

(Shift moves in; Command on Mac zooms out. Might need to click on image first. On iDevice, can move device around to pan).

Hide... Moving left from the ranger on his radio, we see the Junction Pass area (the curved slope below Mt. Keith; Junction Peak is hidden behind the rocks behind the ranger). Junction Pass was the old Muir Trail before Forester was built. Farther left Mt.Bradley (above lake at base of pass) rises enough to block views of the White-Inyo Mountains in the distance. Center Peak blocks the swath of forest farther left but is otherwise hard to discern. The high peak above the forested area is University Peak, named for the University of California. Farther left and just west of north is Mt. Gould, just left of a peak with a saddle summit and above the leftmost part of the forest. Prominent summits to the left are Split Mountain, the Middle Palisade Group, and Mt Sill/North Palisade group. Swinging to the south, the leftmost peak is Caltech Peak; beyond that are the darker Kaweah Peaks; Mt. Kaweah is the trapezoidal peak towards the left side of this group. Farther left, the Kern Canyon angles right to left, spliting pieces of the Chagoopa Plateau surface, arguably including the Bighorn Plateau (bare area above the two lakes at left). The edge of Diamond Mesa is at the left.

The area of the pass and the granitic rocks to the south are part of the Whitney Intrusive Sequence, the Paradise pluton dominating the foreground while the Whitney pluton underlies more distant topography. The Kaweah Peaks are older granituc rocks on the left and metavolcanic rocks to the right. The gentle surface of the Chagoopa Plateau equivalents have suggested an earlier phase of erosion and pedimentation, but other workers have suggested that these surfaces can be diachronous and created in the presence of large relief. Glacial erosion is evident in all views; glacial trim lines representing the upper limit of glaciation separate frost-riven rock with avalanche gullies from smoother lower slopes.

To the north the geology is more diverse. The older Bullfrog Pluton makes up the nearby peaks beyond a screen of dark metamorphic rocks seen to the left of Junction Pass and below Mt. Bradley. Farther off, the diverse assemblage of late Traissic and Jurassic metamorphic rocks and affliated mafic igneous rocks provides some color beyond and left of University Peak. In the far distance, the dark metavolcanic rocks of the Palisades holds up the high peaks in that area.