The Tablelands of the Glass Mountains

Sagehen Station straddles a ridgeback that runs south from Hwy. 120 East at Sagehen Summit up into the Glass Mountain Highlands.  To the west of this saddle lies the Mono Basin, a sweeping landscape surrounding the 750,000 year old form of Mono Lake, one of North America's most ancient lake beds, and the 40,000 year old Mono Craters, the youngest mountain "range" on the continent.  The Mono Basin is a summertime tourist thoroughfare.   It's roads and coffee shops fill with anglers pursuing trout in one of several front-country lakes or streams, with Sierra backcountry adventurers seeking the remote pleasures earned by individual sweat and toil, and with Yosemite visitors from far-off lands.  It is a place of motion and commotion.

Dropping east from this saddle is a land of a quieter nature, a land of stillness and distance.  It is a land of sweeping forms cut through with shadowed fissures, of sage-carpetted steppes and aspen-cloaked canyons, pine-studded ridges and granite monoliths.  It is a land that whispers in the wind.  Few travel here to listen, fewer still to explore.  These are the Tablelands, a vast plateau flowing north off the heights of Glass Mountain down into the yawning expanse of the Adobe Valley, home of wild horse and sage grouse.  A landscape that pulls at you with an unknowable force.

Several deep canyons cut through this sweeping landscape, stretching their fingers north to Hwy. 120, the only paved road to brave this empty country...Dexter Canyon, Wet Canyon, Taylor Canyon, McGee Canyon, Black Canyon, Klondike Canyon.  Within these abrupt canyon walls flow tranquil streams of clear spring water through shimmering aspen groves and hushed forest glades.  Several isolated meadows with resplendent blooms of alpine shooting star, lupine, indian paintbrush, penstemon and iris are sprinkled throughout this rugged terrain...Johnny Meadow, Sentinel Meadow, Wild Horse Meadow, Wet Meadow, Sawmill Meadow, Dry Creek Meadow.  Jewels each, these canyons, groves and meadows are home to hawk and eagle, tanager and bluebird, bear, deer, coyote, bobcat and mountain lion.

With the hulking Inyo/White mountains to the east and the mighty Sierra Nevada to the west, both popular visitor attractions, the Glass Mountain Tablelands represent one of the least traveled and least known corridors in California.  They are a silent treasure in no particular hurry to be discovered, but one we, writer, photographer and reader, will explore together in the coming seasons.

                               
                                                                                                                                              -gmm