THE WHITE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA 



By Willis Linn Jepson 



ZEST of botanical exploration and the perennial desire for 

 the open of the back country had long combined to whet 

 my desire for a summer's work in the White Mountains of 

 eastern Mono and Inyo counties. They form one side of the 

 great Owens Valley trough, and they rise as abruptly from the 

 valley floor as does the Sierra Nevada wall to the west. 



Our way of approach was by Silver Canon, a characteristic 

 canon of a desert range. Opening into Owens Valley it runs 

 eastward in a nearly straight line for six miles, directly into 

 the White Mountains. As is usually the case in such canons 

 its narrow floor seems nearly level, but the gradient is about 

 ten feet in ten to sixteen rods. At the point where the canon 

 parts into three forks our party of scientific men made camp at 

 6500 feet in order to spend some days in field work on the 

 mammals, birds, and plants. Just at this point in the canon 

 there is a narrow band of a desert Mahogany ( Cercocarpus in- 

 tricatus ) on the canon wall, a species remarkable for its minute 

 leaves. A gay border of moisture-loving plants edges the 

 swift streamlet in the bottom — ^yellow Monkey-flower, an an- 

 nual Indian Paint-brush (Castilleia stenantha), a Columbine, 

 the same as the coast species, and Desert Crowfoot (Ranuncu- 

 lus Cymhalaria) . 



On our journey to the summit of the range we follow the 

 left-hand or northerly fork, which is really the continuation of 

 the main canon, finally leaving the canon bed and zigzagging up 

 its easterly wall. Very soon we enter the zone of the Pifion or 

 One-leaf Pine, which forms here a very fine forest — very open, 

 of course, but giving a distinctive character to these slopes and 

 narrow benches or flats on the mountain side. A full-grown 

 tree is inclined to become very individual, and not a few of 

 them develop the habit of a Coast Live Oak, some standing out 

 in high relief on the steepest rocky walls, some on the little 

 level benches. Towards the upper limit of the Pinon, the com- 



