Talk:Sierra Nevada/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Sierra Nevada. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

older comments

Where is Orsmby County, Nevada? It isn't on the list or the map at List of Nevada counties. – Zoe

IIRC, it was absorbed into Carson City, Nevada. (search search) See older discussion in Talk:Independent city. --Brion 07:10 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)

Zoe: I'm puzzled at the reversion of the last edit by 12.231.69.77 (me), and the marking of the reversion as a minor edit. Certainly, I meant the edits to be a positive contribution and not noise or vandalism.

Let me try and explain the three edits that were made:

1. The material about the rotor was originally in the "Geography of California" page (not written by me) and it seemed far too specific for that page, so I moved it to this one. I was trying to be respectful of the other contributor(s) by not deleting their stuff, even if the material is extremely specific.

2. The National Forests are very important governmental units for the Sierra Nevada (controlling logging, wilderness, etc.) and I thought they deserved listing.

3. Mount Lassen is the southernmost of the Cascades, not really a part of the Sierra Nevada. Listing it twice seems contradictory.

I'm feeling terribly discouraged by this edit. I love California and its geography, but I just don't want to contribute any more to Wikipedia, because I think that anything I say will just get deleted with no discussion or explanation.--hike395

That must have been a mistake - I restored your text and please don't go. :) --mav

For the record, there is a function that is available to Administrators which is called "rollback". This is a function that will remove the changes made by the most recent contributor and restore a page to the state immediately prior to that/those contributions. It automatically fills in the comment as "Reverted to last edit by XXXXXXXXXX" and is automatically marked as a minor edit. It is also accomplished with a single mouse-click and occasionally happens by mistake.

--Dante Alighieri 07:36 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the extra information! --hike395

I propose to move this to Sierra Nevada (U.S.). --Jiang

Is that standard? What's the rationale? (There are 61 links to the page, so it'll be a painful move) – hike395 02:12, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Colorado River (U.S.), The West (U.S.) - that form just seems more standard here. It's okay to have redirects. We're not obligated to fix them. --Jiang 02:15, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Well, I don't feel strongly one way or the other about the name of the page. I'll probably feel obligated to fix the redirects, though :-( – hike395 02:28, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Another possibility that I just thought of: Sierra Nevada (USA) is probably substantially more known than the original Sierra Nevada in Spain (perhaps our European contributors can comment on this?). If this is true, then perhaps we should

Move Sierra Nevada to Sierra Nevada (disambiguation)
Move Sierra Nevada (USA) to Sierra Nevada

Just a thought. Comments? – hike395 03:12, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Please don't make us type the stupid dots over and over! Just use "(US)" if you must, but I can't think of any good reason to move this page; there are a thousand things more important. I didn't know there were other pages using "(U.S.)" to disambig; perhaps I'll move them at some point. ("U.S." instead of "US" is excessive pedantry, and not helpful to our readers.) It does need to keep the disambig in any case; the name "Sierra Nevada" is not that well known outside the western US - Europeans often confuse it with the Rockies for instance. Stan 03:38, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hmmm. According to the USGS (http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnis/web_query.GetDetail?tab=Y&id=253582) the Sierra Nevada does go through Washoe County, Nevada and Douglas County, Nevada. No mention of Carson City though. Strangely enough though the Quads listed on that page aren't in either of those counties. Gar! Geography is confusing. --- Sdp 16:45, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Ack. The USGS must think that the Carson Range is part of the Sierra. How else would it go through both Washoe & Douglas County? Should we change the definition back? – hike395

My opinion is that we list the counties/city (Douglas, Carson City, and Washoe), and we say that they are part of the Carson Range which is a spur off of the Sierra Nevada. --- Sdp

That seems like a good idea. – hike395

Metric conversions - I've done these to make the page understandable for global readership. For exact figures (summits, etc), I used the exact conversion figure (x 0.3048); for rounded figures (vegetation zones, etc), I used x 0.3 and rounded to the nearest 100m (which is still a lot more precise than place-to-place variation in the vegetation zone altitudes!) - MPF 21:51, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Since this is a US topic could you please reverse the metric (standard) order to standard (metric)? --mav

Geology of the Tehachapi Mountains

I'm not sure this material is correct, and may very well belong in the article on the Tehachapis, so I've moved the material to here. If someone does verify it, we can clean it up and either put it back or move it to the Tehachapi article.

At some time in it's past, the Sierras actually extended from N California all the way to the what is now the Mexican border in an almost straignt and unbroken chain. However, the San Andreas fault turned east and transected this range near the latitude of present day Los Angeles before turning south again and continuing down into what is now the gulf of Mexico.

Over the eons, the fault broke the mountain chain and pulled what are now the Tehachapi mountains, which were immediately north of the fault, out of alignment, turning this subsection of the Sierras 90 degrees and pulling it westward. The high desert area to the immediate east of this point was stretched as well forming the great Mojave desert and helping to form what is now Death Valley and several other parallel rifts to the north east. Sections of the primordal Sierras that existed south of the fault transection line now make up large pieces of the San Gabriel mountains that ring the Los Angeles basin.

Geology description probably wrong

By 65 million years ago, the proto-Sierra Nevada was worn down to a range of rolling low mountains, a few thousand feet high. About 25 million years ago, the Sierra Nevada started to rise and tilt to the west.

According to a study published in the July 7 edition of the journal Science, there is two competing views on how Sierra Nevada developed. One is that the mountains rose from sea level in the last 3 to 5 million years, which is very recent on a geologic time scale. The other group suggests a much more ancient origin going back 60 million years or so. According to the study, the evidence now strongly suggests the that Sierra Nevada has not changed much in the last 40 to 50 million years.

Trade between the tribes

Paiutes and Miwoks were actually enemies and did not trade until the late 1800s. If you hit Charles F. Hoffmann link titled "Notes of Hetch Hetchy Valley"[1] you can read that not all Paiutes and Miwoks were on friendly terms. They had several battles. Many times the Monos, who are related to the Paiutes, were go-betweens. The Paiutes traded with the Monos and the Monos traded with western slope tribes.

I need a list of the mountains!!

Dear anon editor: See List of mountains of the United States#Sierra Nevada. Enjoy! hike395

Northern extent of Sierra Nevada

My 1960 Encyclopaedia Britannica says, the Sierra Nevada are, "officially defined by the U.S. Geographic Board as being 'limited on the north by the gap south of Lassen Peak, and on the south by Tehachapi Pass'". I haven't found that definition on any current USGS sites, but I'd like to get the northern extent correct for Wikipedia. The lowest pass between the Pacific drainage and the Great Basin appears to be Beckwouth Pass, near the eastern end of route 70. Any comments? Mackerm 16:35, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It's a tricky question. Definitely, Mount Lassen is a Cascade volcano, so should be excluded. Part of the definition is whether you consider geography, geology, or ecology. For an ecological definition, the United States Forest Service says that the Sierra Nevada stop at Susanville, California (see [2]). But, they claim that the Tehachapi Mountains are ecologically part of the Sierra Nevada, which doesn't make too much sense geologically (it's clear that the Tehachapis are part of the Transverse Ranges).

As a working definition of the northern boundary that matches the USFS ecological definition, I would propose putting the northern boundary at California State Route 36, which passes through Fredonyer Pass, a pass to the southeast of Mount Lassen. So, we can replace Mount Lassen with both of these landmarks.

Drawing the boundary at California State Route 70 excludes a lot of Plumas County, which I think is part of the Sierra Nevada, since the controverty over logging in the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan had issues in Plumas County.

-- hike395 17:28, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

My atlas puts Freedonyer pass at 5748 ft., as opposed to the 5206 ft. you report. It also has Beckwourth pass at 5228 ft. If you have recent altitude measurements for both, it would be a big help. But a 500 foot difference is significant.

I also have a problem with using Route 70 as a border, though it's a geographical problem. Route 70 starts out following the north fork of the Feather river, but then jumps over to the middle fork. I'd think a consistent boundary should follow one stream bottom to a headwater. But the middle fork is too far south for most people to swallow.

[edit] I just noticed that this USFS page: [3] puts the northern edge at the "Susan River" which looks like it starts on the East slope of Lassen. No help there. Mackerm 22:27, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

For the elevation of the pass, I just lookup up the USGS map and read the elevation of the benchmark. That probably wasn't at the peak of the pass – I'll use your elevation & drop the lat/long (feel free to add what your Atlas says). – hike395 02:13, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Later --- let's not dismiss the Susan River too quickly. For a while, it flows along California State Route 44, draining McCoy Flat Reservoir and Hog Flat Reservoir. It looks like the USFS boundary goes SW from there, leaving the Susan River. This definition would include Pegleg Mountain and Fredonyer Butte as Sierra peaks.

On the other hand, I've driven around up there, and if you blindfolded me and took me either north or south of Route 44, then unblindfolded me, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. It's all open Ponderosa pine (?) forest, with very gentle topography.

As an alternative to all of this (perhaps artificial) exactitude, how about saying that the northern boundary is approximately at Susanville, California? – hike395 02:26, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Another data point (probably wrong), USGS says it ends at Mount Lassen ([4]). But, they also say it ends at the California/Nevada border, which is clearly wrong --- the White Mountains are in California and are definitely not part of the Sierra Nevada (being in the Basin and Range Province.

Several references put the boundary at the North fork of the Feather River, which is better known than Susanville. I'd be satisfied with that, except the upper reaches of the North Fork are well to the west of the Pacific Crest. So Fredonyer pass looks like the place. (You can correct the spelling of "Fredonyer" in the links. :) ) I'll leave the definition as you've written it, but I might add something about other Sierra passes in the body of the article.

My atlas doesn't have exact latitude/longitude markings. Sorry. I'll see if I can extract anything from the USGS site Mackerm 05:12, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Discussion about the title of this article and its recent change can be found at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (acronyms)#Changing article titles from XXXXX (US) to XXXXX (United States). Feel free to contribute. – hike395 16:28, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"The Sierras"

I always assumed that the name "The Sierras" was used in the sense of each mountain being "a Sierra", or as a shortened form of "The Sierra Mountains". It does violate the meaning of "Sierra" as a name for the entire range or region, but that's imprecise speech for you. --Yath 17:19, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I was wrong about the tautology. "The Sierras" just means "the mountains" which is what people who live near them are likely to call them. Just like, as you say, we who live near New York City are likely to call it "The City." What I was thinking of was "Sierra Mountains" which is redundant or what some call a tautology, because it says, in effect, "mountain mountains". Thank you for calling me on it. Shoaler 18:21, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If that is the case, then calling it "The Sierras" is entirely proper. And given the fact that the locals refer to them in that way the majority of the time, it deserves a more prominent place than "The Sierra". --Yath 20:30, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm a local, and I always use "The Sierra" (FWIW). Back in 1947, Francis Farquhar (an authority on place names in the Sierra) wrote a short article in the Sierra Club Bulletin, explaining why "Sierras" is less correct that "Sierra". You can see the article here.

I would prefer "The Sierra" to come first --- read the article and see for yourself.

-- hike395 22:32, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm a Local as well, and I always say "the Sierras." However, this is in full knowledge that the proper way of referring to my wonderful Mountains would be "The Sierra Nevada," with no pluralization; it is one range. Everyone I know refers to them as "the Sierras," so I guess it's a matter of whether we want to go by usage, or what has historically been "proper." Canæn 06:15, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Map needed

This article needs a little map showing where the Sierra Nevada are. Mentioning that it is the "south of California" is far too little information for most people outside the U.S. 80.60.172.181 18:24, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Almost entirely in California?

Are the Sierras a subset of the Rocky Mountains or are they distinct? Some mapology would certainly be helpful here but I am technologically deficient. What has all this got to do with the "Big Rock Candy Mountain" and "Sugar Mountain"? Where's Neil Young when you really need him? Help!!

Some mention of the fact that "Sierra" means "saw" (carpentry tool, implement; noun) and "Nevada" means "snowy" in Spanish might also be beneficial to the article. In other words, these are the "Snowy Saw-Tooth Mountains".

Nodoremi 13:54, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The Sierras are entirely distinct from the Rockies. The article already says what the name means – see Sierra for why it doesn't really mean saw. – Cjensen 21:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Sierra means Mountain, or Mountains; refers to a mountain range, if I'm correct. All I know about Sugar Mountain is that we sang it at my summer camp, in the north-central Sierras (Emmigrant; Stanislaus NF, just north of Yosemite). File:Icons-flag-scotland.png Canæn File:Icons-flag-scotland.png 01:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Sierra does mean "saw" but it also means "mountain range". In this case, "saw" has nothing to do with the name. The Sierra Nevada, simply means "the snowy mountain range" in Spanish.

Sierra is "mountain range". Tmangray (talk) 20:55, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Biology section should be renamed "ecology"?

I left a message on Biology of the Sierra Nevada, and I figured I'd leave it here too. Biology seems like an odd name for a section that really describes, more specifically, ecology. You generally don't talk about the "biology" of the region; that'd be like talking about the "science" of the region. I'll move the article and make all other necessary changes to rename the section/article Ecology of the Sierra Nevada, if no one protests. I'd prefer to keep the discussion to the sub-article's talk page, so please make any comments there. – Ci e lomobile ^{talk / contribs} 02:51, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I have done this now. – Ci e lomobile ^{talk / contribs} 07:50, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Sierre Nevada range as scene from the west, an image?

Has anybody ever even scene the Sierra Nevada from west of it? Why the almost entire focus on the range viewed from the east side? This article is is sore need of a picture of the Sierra from Mt. Diablo, or something. Actually, I need one and came for one, but it's not here! KP Botany 19:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The slope is so gradual from the west there's really not much to be seen of the range as a whole. The shot from Diablo is a good angle, but ultra-hard because of distance and intervening air pollution - would take a perfect still day, top-notch telephoto, and Galen Rowell skills. I have some aerial shots more-or-less from the west in my backlog, they're not great though. Stan 20:01, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Stan: the east side is much more photogenic. Check out commons:Sierra Nevada: most of the pictures are either Yosemite or the east side. hike395 04:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Ref Desk question, origin of the name

There's currently a ref desk question which editors here may be interested in: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities#state of nevada.—eric 03:55, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Why the page title?

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (abbreviations) says that disambiguators for the United States should be U.S. as opposed to US. Why is this article different (despite several editors' attempts to change it)? -Running On Brains 17:15, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (abbreviations) are guidelines for acronym use in content, not disambiguators. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (acronyms) which states that US is preferred for page name disambiguation. – Cjensen 00:39, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Gah. I see someone made a recent change to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (acronyms). Let's see if it sticks before we get excited about moves. – Cjensen 01:50, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Someone edited Wikipedia:Naming conventions (acronyms) without looking at consensus, which has not yet been reach at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (abbreviations). hike395 03:51, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Consistency of abbreviations and links

I've noticed that throughout the article there's usage of feet, ft., ft, meters, m, etc. etc. We should really decide on some guidelines (if some don't already exist somewhere) for where to use abbreviations and where to spell out. Most important now is deciding between ft. and feet, I prefer the latter simply because it flows better and have made some changes to that effect. Also, why are the units wikilinked in the Mt. Whitney bullet but nowhere else? If we do link units, it should be the first time in the article that they appear and preferably not at all after that. trisweb (Talk) 19:45, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Needs Clarity as to origin Dating, Language

The Sierra as a modern range didn't come into existence until about 4 million years ago, not 150 million years ago. What I believe the editor meant to say was that the batholith which forms the core of todays Sierras began to be formed then. This batholith was not however a mountain or range of mountains, it was buried underground. There were some volcanos as well at the surface, but these weren't todays Sierras. The uplift came much much later. Can we make the appropriate edits to clarify? Tmangray 23:11, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I might add that if we are referring to the Sierra batholith as the beginning of the range, it actually began to form in the Triassic, EARLIER than 150 MYA. The Jurassic was the second of three plutonic episdodes forming the Sierra core. Tmangray 05:40, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

In Wikipedia articles about geology of mountain ranges, we do discuss ancestral ranges. This follows the format of layman geology text, and web pages such as the USGS. See Geology of the Rocky Mountains and Geology of the Appalachians. This makes sense to me: if someone visits the Sierra, they can see evidence of prior activity (e.g., the roof pendants in the Sherwin Range, or the volcanics north of Highway 108), and the article helps explain it.

Tmangray deleted some material about the older (pre-uplift) activity. I restored it. But, I would be happy if Tmangray clarified it. Give it a shot. hike395 18:30, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd be happy to. Thanks. Tmangray (talk) 01:34, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Weird

There mostly in California and there called Sierra Nedvada! —Preceding unsigned comment added by LagosGuy (talk • contribs) 05:59, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

The mountains were named before there was a territory or state named Nevada. Not so weird.Tmangray (talk) 20:58, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Merge

It's been proposed to merge List of guidebooks about the Sierra Nevada into this article. I think that would be a bad idea. That list is quite long and would unbalance this article. I don't see what benefit would be gained. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 16:12, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

What is the purpose of this separate article? If Someone wants to read about the Sierra Nevada it won't help him if he will need to go to another article which is only a list. Plus, If Ill merge the articles I can do it in a way that the new content wont cause an unbalance in this article. תחי מדינת ישראל (talk) 16:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Please please don't merge. That article is linked from here: we shouldn't junk up an informative article with a huge list. hike395 (talk) 22:08, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Objection to a proposed merge Contrary to appearances, there is a byte limit to article size at which an automated message appears calling for consideration of splitting an article. Since there is already a list of guides to the Sierra Nevada, why reverse progress by adding work which would have to be undone, eventually? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 08:22, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Comment

Then what about scientists who don't want anything too casual and the travelers who don't want it too scientific?Jasper Deng (talk) 19:01, 1 June 2008 (UTC))

Range of Light

The article says (wrongly):

"Its most common nickname is the Range of Light. This nickname comes from John Muir,[18] which is a description of the unusually light-colored granite exposed by glacial action."

Sadly, No.

Coining the "Range of Light"

The term "Range of Light" was coined in the following passage by Muir from The Mountains of California. "After ten years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing the sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday radiance on the trees and rocks and snow, the flush of alpenglow, and a thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain chains I have ever seen."

His point had nothing to do with something as pedestrian as light colored granite, nor did he ever indicate such. The nickname is a highly romantic notion particularly appropriate if one has spent a lot of time in the High Sierra.

Please correct this.

75.84.209.35 (talk) 13:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Buttermilks merge?

The only feedback I've seen on this is on Talk:The Buttermilks. Unless someone objects, I will remove the merge recommendation from both pages. -Justin (talk) 15:37, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Biodiversity

The Sierra Nevada's biodiversity is globally significant. We should add it to this article, in addition to the main Ecology of the Sierra Nevada article.

A source. -Justin (talk) 15:37, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Human use

Another to do section. Economic use (timber, mining, livestock, etc), recreational use. -Justin (talk) 18:50, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Hydrology Section

A proposed additional to-do. The rivers, lakes, and reservoirs of the Sierra are important for recreational and economic reasons. Seems like they merit a separate section. The Sierra is the major water resource of California. But I doubt that I will have time to work on this any time soon. Robsavoie (talk) 02:33, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

To do: mountaineering section

Hike395 mentioned that a mountaineering section would help this article. It's an important part of the history of human use of the range, and climbing techniques that were new to North American climbers found their foothold in the Sierra Nevada in the early 20th century.

However, to keep this current, I'm thinking of making it a more general climbing section. This way we can include the historical mountaineering landmarks, as well the ongoing development of world class trad climbing and bouldering routes.

Any input? I'll start this section soon. --Justin (talk) 17:16, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Happy to help, Justin and Hike395. I wrote a college paper a third of a century ago on this very topic. Francis P. Farquhar's "History of the Sierra Nevada" is a good place to start. Cullen328 (talk) 15:06, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

A climbing/mountaineering section would really add to the article. I'm not really an expert: I look forward to contributions from both of you! —hike395 (talk) 02:12, 2 June 2010 (UTC)