Heading south from Bishop airport our route takes us down the center of Owens Valley, climbing steeply at low speed. Here, looking southwest, the Big Pine Canal taps into the meandering Owens River about 5 km northeast of Keough Hot Springs.
Looking east (into the morning sun), enigmatic hills of highly deformed Paleozoic strata crop out low on the western flank of the Inyo Range. These rocks have been studied by Cal Stevens, Dave Greene, Paul Stone, and others.
A favorite photo: faults, springs, and a volcano south of Big Pine. Two faults are clearly marked by springs, and the upper (western) of the two apparently terminates at Red Mountain, the beautiful volcano about 2 km west of Highway 395. Taboose Creek is the moraine-bound creek in the upper left part of the photo.
Flying over the lower part of the canyon of Red Mountain Creek, at an altitude of about 7500'. Split Mountain (14,058') is the high peak on the right, and Cardinal Mountain (13,397') is the subtle peak at the end of the long ridge on the left. The light rock within the canyon is the Jurassic leucogranite of Red Mountain Creek. It is capped by a thin roof of dark brown sandstones of the Cambrian Campito Formation. Above the Campito, the dark gray pluton that makes up the summit of Split Mountain and the bulk of Tinemaha Peak, on the right side of the photo, is the Jurassic Tinemaha Granodiorite.
The thin screen of Campito Formation that caps the leucogranite along a flat contact on the Cardinal-Split arete turns east and dips more steeply along the north side of Red Mountain Creek.
The amazing Cardinal-Split arete. Pale green rock at the very summit of Cardinal Mountain and embedded in the south face of Split Mountain is marble and calc-silicate rocks of the Cambrian Poleta Formation.
Rock glaciers in the cirque of the south fork of Red Mountain Creek. The color contrast between the pale granite and dark brown sedimentary rocks is especially striking.
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Next leg: Around Split Mountain