Mono Lake

South Tufa, Mono Lake

South Tufa, Mono Lake

Mono Lake is one of the locations in the Eastern Sierra that is well known and it should be, because it's existed for over one million years. Today, the lake is located just outside the town of Lee Vining, California, and is easily accessible from Highway 395. Mono Lake is unique for innumerable reasons - it is 2.5 times as salty as the Pacific Ocean; it is home to the Mono Lake Brine Shrimp; it provides a needed spot for migratory birds, and it has a rich place in geologic and human history. Despite all of these amazing things, the main attraction at Mono Lake are and has been its tufas. A tufa is an otherwordly looking phantasmagorical tower of rock. Specifically, tufa or tufas are limestone towers, formed by the precipitation of carbonate materials in water. In Mono Lake, underwater springs rich with calcium have come in contact with lakewater rich with carbonates for hundreds of thousands of years; and the end chemical reaction is the slow growth of these limestone towers that only form underwater. Some of these tufa towers can grow up to thirty feet in height, which occurs over a great period of time. While the tufas have existed for quite a bit of time, they weren't as visible to the public until some of the water in Mono Lake was diverted in 1941. Today, the tufas in the lake are quite visible, especially after three years of drought in California.