lambertiana
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2000
- Messages
- 8,430
Yesterday I did a quick hike to White Chief Lake out of Mineral King in Sequoia NP. After negotiating the 698 curves on the poorly paved (and partially dirt) 1.5 lane Mineral King road, we got on the trail at 7800' a little before 8 AM. Only a couple miles in we got to the lower part of White Chief basin:
There is no trail to White Chief Lake, only to White Chief Bowl. We left the trail and headed up to the lake, which is just above 10,400' (3170 M for those across the pond). It is situated on a small shelf just below the small cliff face about a quarter of the way down from the top of the slope in the picture above. It is an easy scramble up the face to the lake. The lake itself is, by sierra standards, nothing to write home about:
The reason I like White Chief lake is because of the view from the outlet. There is a small pool in the outlet stream just before it drops off the face, and it creates a zero pool effect that makes for great pictures:
There is a lot of interesting geology at White Chief - two different granodiorite plutons with a large roof pendant that has marble, slate, schist, and hornfels. There is a lot of marble, with well developed karst and numerous caves. Here is a stream coming out of one of the caves:
There is no trail to White Chief Lake, only to White Chief Bowl. We left the trail and headed up to the lake, which is just above 10,400' (3170 M for those across the pond). It is situated on a small shelf just below the small cliff face about a quarter of the way down from the top of the slope in the picture above. It is an easy scramble up the face to the lake. The lake itself is, by sierra standards, nothing to write home about:
The reason I like White Chief lake is because of the view from the outlet. There is a small pool in the outlet stream just before it drops off the face, and it creates a zero pool effect that makes for great pictures:
There is a lot of interesting geology at White Chief - two different granodiorite plutons with a large roof pendant that has marble, slate, schist, and hornfels. There is a lot of marble, with well developed karst and numerous caves. Here is a stream coming out of one of the caves:
