Click to open a Pano of Sunflowers along the Lubken Canyon Road south of Lone Pine.

When you climb out of the Owens Valley via Sheperds Pass you ascend nearly 9,000 feet. When I hiked over Sheperds Pass I was reminded of a passage from Heinrich Herr's adventure classic, Seven Years in Tibet. Herr and his companion were fugitives from British India because of the outbreak of WW II, and were wandering around in the remote little known areas of eastern Tibet.

They were in an area populated by the Khampa tribe, which is known to this day for its dangerous bandits. In an attempt to escape some Khampas who were following them, they climbed up a mountain pass that exceeded 17,000 feet in elevation. While they escaped the bandits, when they reached the top of the pass, after climbing and climbing for what seemed forever, they were amazed and alarmed to discover that, instead of going down on the other side, the territory just swept off into the distance with no descent at all. They had climbed up to the Chang Thang, the world's highest plateau.

Well, when you reach the top of Sheperds Pass in the Sierra you find yourself in a very similar situation. Unlike what you expect, the landscape does not drop off on the other side of the pass, but, rather, sweeps off into the distance in the form of the Tyndall Plateau, at nearly 13,000 feet, one of the highest plateaus in the world. The image below was taken on the windswept and largely barren plain of the plateau beneath Mt. Tyndall, at 14,018 feet one of the Sierra Nevada's noted "Fourteeners."

Boulders on the Tyndall Plateau