Mount Wallace (Fresno And Inyo Counties, California)
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Mount Wallace is a mountain summit located on the crest 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 primari ...
mountain range in northern
California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
, United States. It is situated on the shared boundary of
Kings Canyon National Park Kings Canyon National Park is a national park of the United States 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 ren ...
with
John Muir Wilderness The John Muir Wilderness is a wilderness area that extends along the crest of the Sierra Nevada of California for , in the Inyo National Forest, Inyo and Sierra National Forests. Established in 1964 by the Wilderness Act and named for naturalist ...
, and along the common border of
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 United States census, the population was 1,008,654. The county seat is Fresno, the fifth-most populo ...
with Inyo County. It is west of the community of Big Pine, northwest of Mount Powell, southwest of Picture Peak, and southeast of Mount Haeckel, which is the nearest higher neighbor. Mount Wallace ranks as the 79th-highest summit in California, and the ninth-highest in the Evolution Region.


History

In 1895,
Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an American environmental organization with chapters in all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded in 1892, in San Francisco, by preservationist John Muir. A product of the Pro ...
explorer Theodore S. Solomons named a group of mountains in the Sierra Nevada after exponents of Darwin's theory of evolution. These six peaks are now known collectively as the Evolution Group. Solomons wrote: "At a distance of two miles it he wall of Mount Darwinrises perpendicularly five or six hundred feet, forming Mt. Haeckel, and a mile beyond again rises several hundred feet higher, though not quite so sharply, forming the peak called Mt. Wallace... Next morning uly 16, 1895we climbed Mt. Wallace." This mountain is named for
Alfred Russel Wallace Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection; his 1858 pap ...
(1823–1913), a British
naturalist Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...
, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist who is best known for developing the theory of evolution contemporaneously with Darwin. The other five peaks were named after
Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
, John Fiske,
Ernst Haeckel Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; ; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, natural history, naturalist, eugenics, eugenicist, Philosophy, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biology, marine biologist and artist ...
,
Herbert Spencer Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in '' ...
, and
Thomas Henry Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist who specialized in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The stor ...
. The 1895 climb by Theodore Solomons and party was the
first ascent In mountaineering and climbing, a first ascent (abbreviated to FA in climbing guidebook, guide books), is the first successful documented climb to the top of a mountain or the top of a particular climbing route. Early 20th-century mountaineers a ...
of the summit.


Climate

Mount Wallace is located in an
alpine climate Alpine climate is the typical 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 of alpine cli ...
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 ins ...
s originate in the
Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...
, 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 from this mountain drains northeast into Bishop Creek, and west into Evolution Creek, which is a
San Joaquin River The San Joaquin River ( ; ) is the longest river of Central California. The long river starts in the high Sierra Nevada and flows through the rich agricultural region of the northern San Joaquin Valley before reaching Suisun Bay, San Francis ...
tributary.


Gallery

File:Picture Peak, Wallace, Haeckel.jpg, Mt. Wallace's summit centered (behind ridge)
Picture Peak (left), Mt. Haeckel in upper right. Clyde Spires far left. File:Aspen Grove, Sierra Nevada, CA 10-8-18.jpg, Mt. Haeckel centered, top of Wallace behind ridge to left


See also

* List of the major 4000-meter summits of California


References


External links

* Weather forecast
Mount Wallace
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wallace, Mount Inyo National Forest Mountains of Inyo County, California Mountains of Fresno County, California Mountains of Kings Canyon National Park Mountains of the John Muir Wilderness Four-thousanders of the United States Mountains of Northern California Sierra Nevada (United States)