Columbine Peak is a 12,662-foot-elevation (3,859 meter) mountain summit located west of the crest of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, in

Fresno County Fresno County (), officially the County of Fresno, is a county located in the central portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 1,008,654. The county seat is Fresno, the fifth-most populous city in Cali ...

of northern

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, United States. It is situated between Palisade Basin and Dusy Basin in the Palisades area of northern

Kings Canyon National Park Kings Canyon National Park is an American national park in the southern Sierra Nevada, in Fresno and Tulare Counties, California. Originally established in 1890 as General Grant National Park, the park was greatly expanded and renamed to King ...

. It is west of

North Palisade North Palisade is the third-highest mountain in the Sierra Nevada range of California, and one of the state's small number of peaks over 14,000 feet, known as fourteeners. It is the highest peak of the Palisades group of peaks in the central par ...

, south of Bishop Pass, and immediately north of Knapsack Pass. This mountain's name has been officially adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names. The

first ascent In mountaineering, a first ascent (abbreviated to FA in guide books) is the first successful, documented attainment of the top of a mountain or the first to follow a particular climbing route. First mountain ascents are notable because they en ...

of the summit was made prior to 1925 by persons unknown.Hervey Voge and David R. Brower, ''A Climber's Guide to the High Sierra'' (1954)
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Climate

According to the

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, notabl ...

system, Columbine Peak is located in an

alpine climate Alpine climate is the typical weather (climate) for elevations above the tree line, where trees fail to grow due to cold. This climate is also referred to as a mountain climate or highland climate. Definition There are multiple definitions o ...

zone. Most

weather front A weather front is a boundary separating air masses for which several characteristics differ, such as air density, wind, temperature, and humidity. Disturbed and unstable weather due to these differences often arises along the boundary. For in ...

s originate in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

, and travel east toward the Sierra Nevada mountains. As fronts approach, they are forced upward by the peaks, causing them to drop their moisture in the form of rain or snowfall onto the range (

orographic lift Orographic lift occurs when an air mass is forced from a low elevation to a higher elevation as it moves over rising terrain. As the air mass gains altitude it quickly cools down adiabatically, which can raise the relative humidity to 100% and cr ...

). Precipitation

runoff Runoff, run-off or RUNOFF may refer to: * RUNOFF, the first computer text-formatting program * Runoff or run-off, another name for bleed, printing that lies beyond the edges to which a printed sheet is trimmed * Runoff or run-off, a stock marke ...

from this mountain drains into tributaries of the

Middle Fork Kings River The Middle Fork Kings River is a tributary of the Kings River in Kings Canyon National Park, California, in the southern Sierra Nevada. Draining – almost all of it wilderness – the Middle Fork is one of the largest wholly undeveloped water ...

Gallery

File:Dusy Basin in Kings Canyon1.jpg, Columbine Peak (right) from Dusy Basin File:Columbine Peak from Dusy Basin.jpg, Columbine Peak (centered) from Dusy Basin. Isosceles Peak to left. File:Columbine Peak, Dusy Basin.jpg, Columbine Peak (centered) from Dusy Basin.

References

{{reflist

External links

* Weather forecast
Columbine Peak
* Columbine Peak Rock Climbing
Mountainproject.com
Mountains of Fresno County, California Mountains of Kings Canyon National Park North American 3000 m summits Mountains of Northern California Sierra Nevada (United States)

Climate

Gallery

See also

References

External links