Mount Wallace (Fresno and Inyo counties, California)

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Mount Wallace
Mt. Wallace.jpg
Northwest aspect
Highest point
Elevation 13,377 ft (4,077 m) [1]
Prominence 337 ft (103 m) [1]
Parent peak Mount Haeckel (13,418 ft) [2]
Isolation 0.39 mi (0.63 km) [2]
Listing Sierra Peaks Section
Coordinates 37°08′49″N118°39′24″W / 37.1468068°N 118.6567979°W / 37.1468068; -118.6567979 [3]
Naming
Etymology Alfred Russel Wallace
Geography
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Mount Wallace
Location in California
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Mount Wallace
Mount Wallace (the United States)
Location Kings Canyon National Park
Fresno County / Inyo County
California, U.S.
Parent range Sierra Nevada
Topo map USGS Mount Darwin
Geology
Rock age Cretaceous
Mountain type Fault block
Rock type granitic
Climbing
First ascent July 16, 1895
Easiest route class 3 [2]

Mount Wallace is a 13,377-foot-elevation (4,077-meter) mountain summit located on the crest of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in northern California, United States. [3] It is situated on the shared boundary of Kings Canyon National Park with John Muir Wilderness, and along the common border of Fresno County with Inyo County. It is 21 miles (34 km) west of the community of Big Pine, 1.38 miles (2.22 km) northwest of Mount Powell, 0.5 miles (0.80 km) southwest of Picture Peak, and 0.37 miles (0.60 km) southeast of Mount Haeckel, which is the nearest higher neighbor. [1] Mount Wallace ranks as the 79th-highest summit in California, [2] and the ninth-highest in the Evolution Region. [1]

Contents

History

In 1895, Sierra Club explorer Theodore S. Solomons named a group of mountains in the Sierra Nevada after exponents of Darwin's theory of evolution. [4] [5] These six peaks are now known collectively as the Evolution Group. Solomons wrote: "At a distance of two miles it [the wall of Mount Darwin] rises 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 [July 16, 1895] we climbed Mt. Wallace." [6] This mountain is named for Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist who is best known for developing the theory of evolution contemporaneously with Darwin. [7] The other five peaks were named after Charles Darwin, John Fiske, Ernst Haeckel, Herbert Spencer, and Thomas Henry Huxley.

The 1895 climb by Theodore Solomons and party was the first ascent of the summit. [8]

Climate

Mount Wallace is located in an alpine climate zone. [9] Most weather fronts originate in the Pacific Ocean, 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). Precipitation runoff from this mountain drains northeast into Bishop Creek, and west into Evolution Creek, which is a San Joaquin River tributary.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Mount Wallace, California". Peakbagger.com. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Wallace, Mount - 13,377' CA". listsofjohn.com. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
  3. 1 2 "Mount Wallace". Geographic Names Information System . United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior . Retrieved June 20, 2021.
  4. ↑ Francis Peloubet Farquhar, Exploration of the Sierra Nevada, 1925, California Historical Society, page 47.
  5. ↑ Browning, Peter (1986). Place Names of the Sierra Nevada. Berkeley: Wilderness Press. p.  67. ISBN   0-89997-119-9.
  6. ↑ Francis P. Farquhar, Place Names of the High Sierra (1926)
  7. ↑ Peter Browning, Place Names of the Sierra Nevada From Abbot to Zumwalt, 1986, Wilderness Press, ISBN   9780899970479.
  8. ↑ Alan M. Hedden and David R. Brower, A Climber's Guide to the High Sierra (1954)
  9. ↑ "Climate of the Sierra Nevada". Encyclopædia Britannica .
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