The Minarets are a series of jagged peaks located in the

Ritter Range The Ritter Range is a small mountain range within California's Sierra Nevada. Most of the mountain range lies within the Ansel Adams Wilderness. The John Muir Trail passes by many lakes within the Ritter Range. The most prominent peaks of the Rit ...

, a sub-range of the

Sierra Nevada The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily ...

in the state of

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. They are easily viewed from

Minaret Summit Minaret Summit is a mountain pass on Highway 203 in the central Sierra Nevada. The pass, lying on the Madera-Mono County border, is within the Mammoth Ranger District of the Inyo National Forest and located near Devils Postpile National Monumen ...

, which is accessible by auto. Collectively, they form an

arête An arête ( ) is a narrow ridge of rock which separates two valleys. It is typically formed when two glaciers erode parallel U-shaped valleys. Arêtes can also form when two glacial cirques erode headwards towards one another, although frequen ...

, and are a prominent feature in the

Ansel Adams Wilderness The Ansel Adams Wilderness is a wilderness area in the Sierra Nevada of California, United States. The wilderness spans ; 33.9% of the territory lies in the Inyo National Forest, 65.8% is in the Sierra National Forest, and the remaining 0.3% cover ...

which was known as the Minaret Wilderness until it was renamed in honor of

Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advoca ...

in 1984. The peaks were named in 1868 by the California Geographical Survey, which reported: "To the south of

Mount Ritter Mount Ritter is the highest mountain in Madera County, California, Madera County, California, in the Western United States, at an elevation of . It is also the highest and most prominent peak of its namesake, the Ritter Range, a subrange of the S ...

are some grand pinnacles of granite, very lofty and apparently inaccessible, to which we gave the name of 'the Minarets.'" Seventeen of the Minarets have been given unofficial names, including Michael Minaret, Adams Minaret, Leonard Minaret, and Clyde Minaret. Clyde Minaret, named after

Norman Clyde Norman Clyde (April 8, 1885 – December 23, 1972) was a mountaineer, mountain guide, freelance writer, nature photographer, and self-trained naturalist. He is well known for achieving over 130 first ascents, many in California's Sierra Nevada an ...

, is the tallest of the spires. The Southeast Face Route of Clyde Minaret is a technical rock climb featured in ''

Fifty Classic Climbs of North America ''Fifty Classic Climbs of North America'' is a climbing guidebook and history written by Steve Roper and Allen Steck. It is considered a classic piece of climbing literature, known to many climbers as simply "The Book", and has served as an inspi ...

''. The area is notable for two fatalities: *

Walter A. Starr, Jr. Walter A. "Pete" Starr Jr. (1903–1933) was an American lawyer and mountain climber. A graduate of Stanford University, Starr was a respected lawyer in San Francisco, but he is better known for his abilities as a mountain climber and an explorer ...

, author of ''Starr’s Guide to the John Muir Trail and the High Sierra Region'', fell to his death while solo-climbing the northwest face of Michael Minaret in 1933. *

Steve Fossett James Stephen Fossett (April 22, 1944 – September 3, 2007) was an American businessman and a record-setting aviator, sailor, and adventurer. He was the first person to fly solo nonstop around the world in a balloon and in a fixed-wing aircraf ...

, an American aviator and adventurer, died in a plane crash near the Minarets in 2007.

References

External links

* * * {{cite web , url = http://www.virtualparks.org/scenes/ZYSXw64e4kWO3wqSfXhjHbw.html , title = Virtual Reality of Lake Ediza , publisher = VirtualParks.org , accessdate = 2009-08-10 Inyo National Forest Sierra National Forest Mountains of Madera County, California Mountains of the Ansel Adams Wilderness Mountains of Northern California