White Mountains
This is a snapshot looking over the crest of the Sierra Nevadas, along the Google Earth flightpath from the Golden Gate to White Mt., which you can engage in from the Mount Diablo 2 page of this website. Bald Mt. Lookout, whose location is labeled in the picture above, is featured on our Bald Mt. page.
In the upper right hand corner of the picture is Mt. Charleston,
Nevada, labeled in red. If you use the Google Earth navigation control to pan
around so that Mt. Charleston is centered on the horizon of the picture, and
then re-engage the forward flight control, you will fly over these points: Just
above the green label for Mt. Ritter is a blue square info link to Mammoth Mt.,
17 miles out; beyond that you fly out over Bishop, Cal. 57 miles away in the
Owens Valley; and Westgard Pass on Hwy 168, 71 miles away. Turning north there
and driving to a hilltop about 15 miles away takes you to the vantage point from
which the rotating panorama below was taken. Continuing along the flightpath
towards Mt. Charleston, 227 miles away, you pass over the north end of Death
Valley, Ca. to reach Las Vegas, Nevada.
This is a rotating panorama of the vista around this lookout. It can be slow to load, but is worth waiting for. Clicking on the panorama will stop its motion, and you can then click and drag it manually at different speeds depending upon where you place your cursor adjacent to the edge of the panorama. If it does not appear, you may see a message at the top of the page asking you to turn off your pop-up blocker to allow it to appear. If you see a message in the panorama space reading “out of memory”, just click over to one of the other links on this page, and then back in to this one to make the panorama appear.
This panorama is taken from an 11,000 ft. el. hill top along a good gravel road you can easily drive to, 14 miles south of the 14, 264 ft. el. summit of White Mt. (37 26 20 N, 118 11 47 W). It is 3 1/2 miles north of the Shulman Bristlecone Pine Grove, where the paved road ends. Two miles farther south is the "Sierra View" overlook, which has an interpretive exhibit labeling what you can see along the Sierra Nevada crest, 25-35 miles to the southeast across the Owens Valley.
The town to the west 12 1/4 miles away in the Owens Valley below is Bishop, CA. To the northwest 45 1/2 miles away is Bald Mt. Lookout, which is featured in another of the pages on this website, linked to at the top of this page. To the south, over the rock outcropping visible a few feet away, 60 miles distant you can see the area of 14.495 ft. high Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in California. To the southwest over the nearby hill with the Bristlecone pines on it, you can see 8953 ft. el. Tin Mt., 56 miles away in the northern part of the Death Valley National Monument. To the west you can look out along Hwy 266 into Nevada, 60 miles away.
To the north the road continues past the 12,000 ft. el. University of California research station as s 4WD trail behind a locked gate to the summit of White Mt. Peak. There are diagrammatic panoramic profiles labeling what can be seen in the view from the summit of White Mt. Peak, which you can access at these links: http://www.viewfinderpanoramas.org/panoramas/AME/White-MP-N.gif and http://www.viewfinderpanoramas.org/panoramas/AME/White-MP-S.gif . The view is similar enough from the hilltop vista in the rotating panorama photo above, to make it worth printing out a copy for your visit.
