High Sierra Topix

How about the tarn on the ne slope of Barton Peak se of Roaring River Ranger Station? I hiked there once as part of getting to know the territory. Not particularly attractive. Created by terminal moraine consisting of large blocks of granite. Can't remember the view but should have a pretty decent view of Palmer Mt.

Mike

Here you go WD, an older pano of Ladder Lake:
http://WildernessApertures.com/img/s11/ ... 0789-6.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Mike, you must have missed it, Cross Country did stipulate no tarns.

To help WD here is the lake one mile down from Lake 10,232 on Goddard Creek:



And another take on Lake 10,232: I call that one Lost Haven Lake now for some reason. It just came to me.



Both Lakes do have fish.

Google Earth of lake 10565 west of Observation Peak:



GE of lake sw of lake 10565 at 10600+ I mention above. Could be one of those infinity view lakes where a more distant background of Black Divide reflects right out of the far shore. Probably nice dusk frame too:



And GE of lake 10500+ we mentioned above:

One way to tell if you are at a unvisited lake is to look for arrowheads or flakes. If you find them around the lake, odds are that it hasn't been visited by anyone, ever.

Maverick

If "tarns" are left out then most if not all of the lakes described in this thread would have to be left out according to the definition of a tarn. From dictionary.com,

tarn   [tahrn]
noun
a small mountain lake or pool, especially one in a cirque.

While I don't take Wickipedia as gospel the article on tarns does show some substantial lakes in Europe that have "tarn" in their name. I think many of us have come to consider a "tarn" as one of those small, sometimes seasonal, shallow ponds often found at the top of a broad pass or off to the side of a high elevation creek. But the key element is one formed by glacial action, carved out of a cirque (but sometime some distance downstream), and sometimes dammed up by a moraine. So I stand by my nomination!

MK

Nice point about obsidian flakes/points. Looking for flakes, or more likely for me, stumbling across them always makes me wonder why a high elevation lake or pond was visited and why it was a campsite. One of my favorite "tarns" was on the rim of Deadman and nowadays does not have a large wildlife population. So I have to assume the "game" was bighorn. Then, though above 10,000 ft and the surroundings barren, the tarn was shallow and subject to midday warming that makes for a comfortable dip. The final appeal was the elevation, with no airconditioning, a family trip to the high country or maybe the guys going hunting in the summer might be a nice way to avoid the oppressive low elevation heat.

Mike

The arbitrary 11,000 ft limit also makes little sense. All lakes above 11,000 feet are not stark and ugly! A tarn is a lake created at the head of a cirque when a glacier melts and the terminal moraine dams it. A more generic term of tarn is often applied to small high glacial ponds. Tarn is not based on elevation or size, but rather the process of its origin. There are many tarns below 11,000 feet.

Perhaps it would be better to define the lake as a minimum size and require it to be scenic. Something worth going to. Not necessarily with fish, but nice enough that you would WANT to visit and camp there.

Thanks for posting the photo of Ladder Lake and the lower lake on Goddard Creek. I used to do many of my trips without a camera. My old Nikon's light meter broke and I really did not have a suitable backpack camera until about 10 years ago.

oldranger, I'm with WD haha. That's obviously too broad a definition.

Wikipidia: A tarn (or corrie loch) is a mountain lake or pool, formed in a cirque excavated by a glacier. It is formed when either rain or river water fills the cirque. A moraine may form a natural dam below a tarn.[2] A corrie may be called a cirque.

As for the 11k limit someone could start a thread just for that. There are very few lakes above 12,000 feet in the Sierra. However lakes are abundant just below that elevation. Actually because peakbaggers tend to gravitate towards those places because they are near many of their target peaks, they tend to be more visited than some lower elevation lakes that have no interest to climbers. Same thing with crosscountry backpackers. They swarm all over the high timberline areas except when the pain to reach them is considerable.

The difference between a pond and a lake is a slippery slope. Some named lakes are the size of what most would refer to as ponds. And I for one would tend to call even rather small ponds lakes if they are deep. Of course there are quite a lot of shallow ponds both at timberline and down in forests with many shrinking or drying up by late summer.

This has been an interesting thread as no name bodies of water both lakes and ponds have always attracted this person when I ramble about terrain. For a photographer small ponds often are more aesthetic because one has more opportunity for interesting middle grounds in a frame.

Ok guys, whoops, and gals

This is Crosscountry's thread--my main point is to make sure that we are talking about the same thing, so Tom should define what he means by tarn. It is clear to me that we all have too much time on our hands this time of the year. Shouldn't we doing taxes or something rather than rattling on (though it is fun!)?

Cheers

Mike

Lake at 10,600 (the upper of a set of lakes) 1 mi. NE of Finger Peak, in the Goddard Creek drainage
Lake 9797 just a few miles farther down the Goddard Creek drainage

I've been to both of these lakes. Camped at 9797 twice. First in '85 and second in '89. There are more visitors here than one would think. In '85, there were 5 or 6 felled trees near a hardened campsite I used. In '89, there was nothing but bark outlines where the trees used to be. I didn't camp at 10,600, but drank from it's cool waters on a descent from Finger Col to 9797, then down Goddard Creek.

I've also been to Lk 10,232 coming from Martha Lk to 9797, then from 9797 to Ionian Basin. Goddard Creek is one of my favorite places until you get below 9797. Then it's just he!!

Here's a pic of 10,600
Here's a lake I nominate. It's on a PG & E road that shortly terminates to the road leading to Wishon Reservoir. I drove to it.