Byway Main Page

Byway Sites (Traveling South to North)

  1. Topaz Lake
  2. Walker River
  3. Bridgeport
  4. Conway Summit
  5. Virginia Creek
  6. Mono Lake
  7. Mono Craters
  8. June Lake
  9. Crestview
  10. Mammoth Lakes
  11. Crowley Lake
  12. Sherwin Grade
  13. Round Valley
  14. Bishop
  15. Bristlecone Pines
  16. Division Creek
  17. Owens Valley
  18. Dehy Park
  19. Manzanar
  20. Lone Pine
  21. Diaz Lake
  22. Coso Junction
  23. Fossil Falls

 

Site No. 12— Sherwin Grade

Highlights

Glaciers & Wilderness

Descending Sherwin Summit is difficult with out using your brakes because you are now entering the deepest valley known as Owens Valley. This valley is a graben valley meaning that it has dropped a few feet to a tens of feet at a time as the Eastern Sierras and White-Inyo Mountains rose.

As you drive down Sherwin grade look for grayish steep marks on the Sierra mountain sides. These grayish marks are called truncated spurs by the Geologists and they indicate fault movement. Furthermore, you may notice mound of rock and soil creating a huge berm around the mouths of Pine Creek, Convict Lake, and the canyon west of Crowley Lake. These are glacial moraines (approximately 710,000 years old), which are material deposited in front of the moving glacier as it proceeded out of the canyons.

Glaciers have the ability to push vast amounts of material in front of them and when the glaciers melted these lateral moraines were left behind. Glaciers also have the ability to carve U-shaped valleys, cirque lakes, and sharp peaks called horns and aretes.