Granite Creek Slide & Spiral Spire

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John Muir Wilderness, Sierra National Forest, Fresno County
mid morning Monday August 7, 2000, slide 00O6-5
Pentax 67 AEII, 55-100mm, Benbo Trekker
Drum scanned Kodak EPN100 220 film to 200mb RGB file
Adobe Photoshop 6.0 processed for accurate image fidelity
Lightjet5000 printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper
signature top right

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The Spiral Spire is a not an official USGS name for this peak although from this northern perspective it may be one of the most impressively shaped granite peaks in the whole Sierra Nevada. The 12,000 plus foot peak is within the South Fork of the San Joaquin River drainage. It was the third morning of backpacking for my brother Joe and I. Joe was fishing for golden trout downstream while I rambled up and down looking for interesting foregrounds for the pointy summit. Can you see Joe in this picture? For this image, I lined up the curving right edge of the whitewater with the peak's top.

Terrain here was fully shaped by glaciers, the last having melted back about 10,000 years ago. One of several such episodes over the last few million Earthly years. The smooth bedrock slabs over which this stream flows was certainly at the base of a great depth of crushing grinding ice. Much rock carried along with the ice provided the grit, which ground away more rock. During the coldest epochs, it was part of a vast ice cap atop the range. Lower down the rapidly sliding water hitting small obstructions in the bedrock can be seen catapulted up in what are called "waterwheels". And yes the smooth underwater rock here is indeed slippery with a typical fine coat of algae. Note lower right on the sun warmed bedrock are two flowers of yellow hued Drummond's cinquefoil, potentilla drummondii. Certainly a location that had been fully underwater weeks earlier at peak snow melt.

The fluted face of the peak has changed most, mainly the result of winter snow avalanches. The other side of the peak appears quite different. Instead of steep, it is like many Sierra granite peak's sunny southern exposures, a gradually sloping plateau. Winter southwest storm winds blow drifting snow over the cliff edge into the calmer lee side below, which piles up deeply in the shadowy chutes. Only so much snow will adhere on such a steep pitch before it all comes rumbling down occasionally blasting away sections of rock along the way. Over the centuries the chutes have smoothed out into the beautiful formation above. As one chute erodes into another, knife-like erete formations are created. The curving erete in front of this peak is due to the fact it is at the corner of a peak top plateau that apparently tends to swirl winds around. Having seen such effects during winter while skiing, I suspect at times it creates quite a snow twister. Also note below the main chute is a talus fan with summer snowfields where recent rocks come to rest.

Trees below the cascade are lodgepole pine, pinus murrayan. A few dried brown needles from such lie on bedrock in the cool water splashed lower right foreground. Also lower behind the cascade and directly above the lodgepole are short brushy yellow willow, salix. Higher up on the steeper smooth rock face are smooth stunted patches of whitebark pine, pinus albcaulis. Any branches that stick up above the snow are broken off by avalanches.

Crop at 100% print size:

   David Senesac
   email: sales@davidsenesac.com

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