Mono Lake

What the defunct trapeze school overlooked is a vast, delicate desert and body of water. Ansel Adams' famous photographs of Mono Lake were taken before Los Angeles' diversion in the early 1940s of most of the water which flowed into it, devastating the lake and its surroundings. The lake as we saw it today has had 20+ years to recover, following a much-celebrated and too tenuous court decision in the 1980s declaring that the lake level had to be restored. The war over water for southern California, however, continues and many people have devoted and are devoting themselves to protecting Mono Lake.

We availed ourselves of the visitors' center, which includes an exhibition of photographs by the likes of Brett Weston and Ansel Adams. This photograph was taken looking toward the escarpment to the west which we will traverse tomorrow.


After checking into our hotel in Lee Vining we spent the afternoon at the southern part of the lake, South Tofa, illuminated by a talk and field trip focusing on the geology of the basin and the formation of the tofa. The late afternoon, toward evening was spent -- go ahead, guess! -- photographing. The presence of clouds would have provided more drama in the photographs we made. But, there are a few things out of the control of even the leaders of a Road Scholar adventure.