Sunrise on the first day, from the White Mountain Research Station.
At the first outcrop: "Knopf's Knob", a Tertiary dike that has partially melted its host granite. Here we're looking toward the White Mountains and the Bishop Tuff (low pink outcrops). (Photo by William Hoyt)
Interlayered tephra and lacustrine sediments outside Long Valley caldera.
Lunch on the first day, looking down into Owens River gorge at a thick section of densely welded Bishop Tuff with columnar joints. The gorge is about 300 feet deep here and is a favorite rock climbing area.
Another lunch spot, this one on a large boulder of Mt. Whitney granite. Mt. Whitney is the distant peak in the left background.
Environmental change: ruins of the old Bartlett chemical plant along the shores of Owens Lake. Owens Lake was a large blue saline lake until about 1915, when Los Angeles began taking water from the eastern Sierra. The lake dried up and became a playa from which salts have been extracted over the years. The day we drove to Death Valley, high winds were lofting tons of nasty saline dust from the playa.
The tufa towers at Mono Lake, another saline lake that is shrinking owing to water withdrawal.
Brake trouble gave us an extra day in Bishop, which some of us used for aerial tours of the area. This is Deep Springs playa, normally dry but full of water this El Niño year.
An aerial view of the famous Poleta Folds area, which is used for geologic mapping by dozens of colleges and universities. The blue and white band is the Upper Poleta Formation, an excellent marker unit.