Driving Through the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: The "Dr. Who" of Mountain Ranges

The Whitney Crest of the High Sierra. Mt. Whitney is just out of sight to the right.

I was torn over the title for this addition to the "Driving Through" blog series. I thought of taking the zombie approach and calling them the living dead mountains ("they keep coming at you"), or the crazed killer angle ("they're never truly dead"), but these seemed...um...overly negative for a mountain range that I love. Then it occurred to me that there is a well-loved media character who is regularly mortally wounded and is regenerated with a new body. And Doctor Who is certainly loved by millions of rabid fans. And that seemed a good analogy for the Sierra Nevada of California. The mountain range has been uplifted, deeply eroded, rejuvenated, eroded, and risen yet again, and the mountains have been different each time.

Tenaya Lake and Mount Conness in Yosemite National Park

The are at least three different mountains that occupied this part of California in the last 400 million years, and most of them were related in some way to convergence, the subduction of sea-floor lithosphere beneath the western edge of the continent. The most recent incarnation of the Sierra Nevada has an enigmatic origin, and many uncertainties remain about the specific mechanics of uplift. But rising they are, even to the present day.

Highly deformed calc-silicate metamorphic rocks in Kings Canyon near Boyden Cave.

The earliest mountains were related to the collision of exotic terranes with the western edge of North America. Some of the rocks had their origins in early Paleozoic time, and were severely deformed during the Devonian period roughly 400 million years ago. Some researchers have related the deformation to the Antler Orogeny that is best revealed in central Nevada. Had one been there at the time, the scene might have been reminiscent of some of the complicated island arcs in Indonesia.

Highly folded slate near Dial's Rock Shop near Mariposa, west of Yosemite National Park

By Triassic time, about 250 million years ago, subduction zones were directly active along the west coast of North America, and chunks and bits (the exotic terranes) became incorporated into the continent itself. Mountains were pushed up along the coast in much the same way as mountains have formed in southern Alaska, but without the glaciers. The edge of the continent was located closer to the equator than today.

Mt. Shasta, in northern California, as a stand-in for the Ancestral Sierra Nevada

By late Jurassic time, about 150 million to 85 million years ago, the so-called Ancestral Sierra Nevada mountains pierced the sky. Subduction was feeding vast batholiths of granitic rock deep in the crust, and large volcanoes and calderas caused mayhem at the surface. These mountains may very well have resembled today's Andes Mountains, and indeed, the margin at that time is referred to as the Andean-style plate margin. And then...the mountains died away again. A massive erosional unroofing began that removed 5-6 miles of overlying rocks, exposing the granitic rocks. Evidence strongly suggests that the mountains had been laid low, to mere hills (although contradictory research exists). Sedimentary rocks from 40-50 million years ago show a system of coastal marshes and estuaries, sandy beaches, and large rivers with sources in at least central Nevada, and possibly farther inland.

Much of the western Sierra Nevada is composed of gently sloping, deeply eroded metamorphic rock, covered here and there by volcanic mudflow deposists (lahars), and ash tuff.

It's only been in the last few millions or tens of millions of years that the present-day Sierra Nevada began rising to their present-day prominence. The mountains rose as a westward tilted block, outlined by major faults on the east side, and the Great Valley of California to the west. As the mountains rose, deep valleys were carved by the westward flowing rivers like the Kings, Merced and Tuolumne. In the last two million years, global cooling brought about a series of ice ages, and glaciers scoured the upper parts of the river valleys, giving rise to the spectacular gorges that we visit today, Yosemite Valley being the epic example.

Yosemite Valley from the vicinity of Turtleback Dome.

So, our drive through the most dangerous plate boundary in the world will continue, following pathways into the heart of this mountain range that is both ancient and youthful at the same time.