“…we saw an immense treeless plain into which the water spreads widely…at the opposite end of this extensive plain, about forty leagues off, we saw a great snow-covered range [una gran sierra nevada] which seemed to run from south-southeast to north-northwest.” (Diary of Pedro Font, The Anza Expedition, 1775-1776)

More than one hundred million years ago, under miles of overlying crust, one great mountain range was formed. In massive pulses of granitic magma, a single block, more than four hundred miles in length, eventually became a single entity.

Rising imperceptibly, it’s miles of ancient cover being slowly stripped away, the range encountered an ice age at the surface and remained buried under thousands of feet of glacial ice…only to be sculpted and rendered in its present form…steep and bold…
…and characteristically… Sierra.

Three million years under rivers of ice, advancing and retreating, glaciers carved the granite, now cold, into bold forms …leaving for us hanging waterfalls.

Water, the Sierra’s most valuable economic resource…roars from snowmelt in the high country and follows ancient paths down the mountain to the Great Valley.

Characteristic of the world’s mountains, lower elevations reveal vegetation quite different than that of higher elevations. Traveling upwards from chaparral and foothill woodlands one encounters the famed mid-Sierran forests of ponderosa pine, sugar pine and even the world’s largest trees, the giant sequoia. Even higher, the traveler will be rewarded with twisted and gnarled lodgepole pine, Sierra juniper … but only the intrepid will find the mountain hemlock and the foxtail pine in the loftiest Sierran haunts.

Nearly half of California’s 7000 plant varieties reside in this grand mountain range. Four hundred of these species are endemic…found no where else in the world. Two hundred of these are rare or endangered.

Eighty-eight different plant communities provide habitat for 300 species of Sierra vertebrates from fish to amphibians and reptiles, birds, and mammals. Sixty-nine of these species are at risk of vanishing forever.

"Camp out among the grass and gentians of glacier meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of Nature’s darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares fall off like autumn leaves.” John Muir, 1898.