Mount Mendel is a peak 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 ...

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 ...

. It is in

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 Kings ...

in the Evolution Region, 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 ...

and adjacent to Mount Darwin which is on the

Sierra crest The Sierra Crest is a roughly generally north-to-south ridgeline that demarcates the broad west and narrow east slopes of the Sierra Nevada and that extends as far east as the Sierra's topographic front (e.g., Diamond Mountains and Sierran e ...

History

Theodore S. Solomons and E. C. Bonner of the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

named a series of mountains for the six major exponents of the theory of

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

. Mount Mendel is named for,

Gregor Mendel Gregor Johann Mendel, Augustinians, OSA (; cs, Řehoř Jan Mendel; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was a biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinians, Augustinian friar and abbot of St Thomas's Abbey, Brno, St. Thomas' Abbey in Br� ...

, an

Augustinian Augustinian may refer to: *Augustinians, members of religious orders following the Rule of St Augustine *Augustinianism, the teachings of Augustine of Hippo and his intellectual heirs *Someone who follows Augustine of Hippo * Canons Regular of Sain ...

friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the ol ...

, who is known as the "father of modern genetics". Other nearby mountains in the group include Mount Darwin,

Mount Fiske Mount Fiske is a 13,503-foot-elevation (4,116 meter) mountain summit located near the crest of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, in Fresno County, California, Fresno County of northern California, United States. It is situated in northern Kings Ca ...

Mount Haeckel Mount Haeckel is a mountain summit located on the crest of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in northern California, United States. It is situated on the shared boundary of Kings Canyon National Park with John Muir Wilderness, and along the common ...

, Mount Huxley, Mount Spencer, Mount Wallace, and

Mount Lamarck Mount Lamarck is a mountain summit located on the crest of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in northern California, United States. It is situated on the shared boundary of Kings Canyon National Park with John Muir Wilderness, and along the commo ...

. The area around the peaks, known as the Evolution Region, includes Evolution Basin, Evolution Valley, Evolution Meadow and Evolution Creek.

Climbing

There are several class 3 and class 4 routes available, however, Mount Mendel is best known for having two of the hardest ice climbs in the High Sierra on its North Face. Two of the documented ice climbs are "Ice Nine" (IV, class 5+, AI4 or WI5) and "The Mendel Couloir", (III class 5.6, AI2 or WI3). See the article

Grade (climbing) In rock climbing, mountaineering, and other climbing disciplines, climbers give a grade to a climbing route or boulder problem, intended to describe concisely the difficulty and danger of climbing it. Different types of climbing (such as sport ...

References

Mountains of Kings Canyon National Park Mountains of Fresno County, California North American 4000 m summits Mountains of Northern California Sierra Nevada (United States) {{FresnoCountyCA-geo-stub