Sierra Nevada

Physiography

The Sierra Nevada is an asymmetrical range with its crest and high peaks decidedly toward the east. The peaks range from 11,000 to 14,000 feet (3,350 to 4,270 metres) above sea level, with Mount Whitney, at 14,494 feet (4,418 metres), the highest peak in the coterminous United States. Summits in the northern portion are much lower, those north of Lake Tahoe reaching altitudes of only 7,000 to 9,000 feet.

Much of the rock is granite or a near relative of granite. There are dividing bands of metamorphosed (heat- and pressure-altered) sedimentary rock—all that is left of a once extensive sedimentary basin—and some large areas of extrusive rock, especially from Lake Tahoe northward; at the northern limit of the Sierras, these rocks merge with the volcanic rocks of the Cascades.

Geology

It has long been recognized that the Sierra Nevada is an upfaulted, tilted block of the Earth’s crust. A major fault zone bounds the block on the east, and it was along this that the great mass that became the Sierra Nevada was uplifted and tilted westward. This explains the asymmetry of the range. As the block was uplifted the abrupt, east-facing escarpment was cut into by the erosive action of wind, rain, temperature change, frost, and ice, and a series of steep-gradient canyons developed. On its western flank, streams flow more gently down the geologic dip slope, creating massive alluvial fans that encroach into the Central Valley of California. Though the massive uplift began many millions of years ago, much of it occurred in the past two million years. The present-day relief of 10,000 to 11,000 feet along the eastern slopes in the southern Sierra Nevada attests to the tremendous uplift.

Drainage and glaciation

The gentler west-facing slope has been dissected by a series of streams, much longer than those of the eastern slope. Such rivers as the Yuba, American, Mokelumne, Stanislaus, Merced, and Kern originate in deep valleys carved largely by glaciers into the predominant granite and some volcanics. All but the Kern drain either into the Sacramento River in the Central Valley on the north or into the San Joaquin on the south, their waters ultimately reaching the Pacific Ocean through the combined delta of these two rivers at San Francisco Bay. Until the water was diverted for irrigation during the early 20th century, the Kern River drained into the Buena Vista Lake basin, south of the San Joaquin River.

During the Pleistocene Epoch (i.e., about 2,600,000 to 11,700 years ago), the river valleys were covered several times by great expanses of ice. Glacial climates developed and dissipated at least twice, and each time excessive snows built snow and ice fields and deep glaciers. The ice carved U-shaped valleys down to an elevation of about 5,000 feet on the western slopes. So much ice existed on the mountaintops that an ice cap was formed as the glaciers coalesced. This cap extended almost 200 miles from Lake Tahoe in the north to the southern high sierra near Mount Whitney.

Extending from the cap were fingerlike valley glaciers, long on the more gentle western slopes but shorter on the sharply uplifted and steeper eastern face. The erosion caused by these glaciers is spectacular. It includes huge cirques (amphitheatre-shaped basins with precipitous walls), moraines (accumulations of rock debris at the former glacier margins), and thousands of glacial lakes dotting the Alpine and subalpine landscape. Such striking and beautiful landforms are the focus of Yosemite National Park and the Lake Tahoe basin. Lake Tahoe is the largest and deepest Alpine lake in the world; it has a surface area of nearly 200 square miles and reaches a maximum depth of about 1,640 feet in its northwestern portion.