Tinemaha

The Tinemaha Inventoried Roadless Area covers 27,060 acres on the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County, California, within the White Mountain Ranger District of Inyo National Forest. The area climbs from the arid Owens Valley floor up steep canyon mouths — Black, Sardine, Spook, Charlie, and Armstrong Canyons — to alpine summits at Mount Tinemaha and Birch Mountain, with Lookout Point and Sawmill Point marking the canyon-shoulder benches. Water originates at high snowmelt cirques and drops through North Fork Big Pine Creek, South Fork Big Pine Creek, the main stem of Big Pine Creek, Fuller Creek, and Division Creek, with year-round flow at Tub, McGann, Harry Birch, Grover Anton, and Scotty Springs sustaining riparian corridors that thread the otherwise dry basin floor.

The community sequence here is remarkable for its vertical compression. The valley floor and lower bajadas carry Mojave Creosote Desert, Sonoran-Mojave Salt Desert Scrub, Intermountain Salt Desert Scrub, Great Basin Dry Sagebrush Shrubland, and Great Basin Big Sagebrush Steppe — big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata), shadscale (Atriplex confertifolia), four-wing saltbush (Atriplex canescens), and winter-fat (Krascheninnikovia lanata). Above that, Great Basin Pinyon-Juniper Woodland of singleleaf pinyon (Pinus monophylla) and big western juniper (Juniperus grandis) gives way to Intermountain Mountain Mahogany Woodland with curl-leaf mountain-mahogany (Cercocarpus ledifolius). Mid-elevation mesic pockets carry Sierra Nevada Jeffrey Pine Forest, California Mixed Conifer Forest, and California Red Fir Forest. Higher still, Sierra Nevada Lodgepole Pine Forest of lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) and California Subalpine Woodland with foxtail pine (Pinus balfouriana, IUCN near threatened) and bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) give way to Sierra Nevada Alpine Shrubland and California Alpine Dry Tundra. Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis, federally threatened and IUCN endangered) grows at the upper subalpine. Riparian stringers of black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa), narrowleaf willow (Salix exigua), and red-osier dogwood (Cornus sericea) follow the Big Pine, Fuller, and Division Creeks. Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) forms isolated montane stands.

This elevational span produces an equally compressed wildlife sequence. American pika (Ochotona princeps) and yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris) occupy the high-elevation talus; white-tailed ptarmigan (Lagopus leucura) and gray-crowned rosy-finch (Leucosticte tephrocotis) inhabit the alpine. Sooty grouse (Dendragapus fuliginosus), Steller's jay (Cyanocitta stelleri), Clark's nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana), and mountain chickadee (Poecile gambeli) move through the subalpine and conifer belts; pinyon jay (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus) and oak titmouse (Baeolophus inornatus) work the pinyon-juniper and lower oak edge. American dipper (Cinclus mexicanus) and black swift (Cypseloides niger) follow the cold creeks. The Inyo County mariposa lily (Calochortus excavatus, IUCN imperiled) and Owens Valley checker-mallow (Sidalcea covillei) persist in spring-fed valley-floor meadows. Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), American black bear (Ursus americanus), bobcat (Lynx rufus), and cougar (Puma concolor) move across the elevational gradient; golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) and prairie falcon (Falco mexicanus) hunt the open slopes. Golden trout (Oncorhynchus aguabonita, IUCN critically imperiled) occur in the cold headwater reaches. Portions of this area fall within the potential range of several federally listed species; see the Conservation section for details.

A hiker climbing from the valley floor up Big Pine Creek begins in sagebrush and salt-desert scrub with the dry rustle of bottlebrush squirreltail, then enters black cottonwood and willow shade along the creek. The trail crosses pinyon-juniper benches near Lookout Point, climbs through Jeffrey pine and red fir, and emerges into lodgepole and foxtail pine below Mount Tinemaha — five major climate zones in a single ascent.

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The 27,060-acre Tinemaha Inventoried Roadless Area lies on the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County, California, within the White Mountain Ranger District of Inyo National Forest. Its terrain — basin and arid in character — frames a long human history shaped first by Indigenous Numic peoples and later by mining, ranching, and Los Angeles' twentieth-century reach into the Owens Valley for water.

The land surrounding Tinemaha is part of the traditional homeland of the Owens Valley Paiute. Inyo National Forest "encompasses the traditional homelands, hunting and gathering areas, trading destinations, and ceremonial areas for numerous federally recognized and non-federally recognized Paiute and Western Shoshone tribes" [3]. The Big Pine Paiute Tribe of the Owens Valley, the federally recognized tribe centered on the community immediately east of the roadless area, traces ancestral lifeways "based on traditional subsistence" and the gathering of "resources from the earth in a varying schedule which relied on seasons and locations" [1]. The Big Pine Paiute, Bishop Paiute, Fort Independence Tribe of Paiute, and Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Tribe remain Inyo Forest tribal partners today [3]. The Owens Valley Paiute know the valley as Payhuunadü — "the land of flowing water."

Euro-American contact came with mining. After silver and other metal discoveries in the eastern Sierra and Inyo Mountains in the 1860s, mining settlements multiplied across Inyo County, with associated freighting, charcoal-burning, and timber harvesting in the surrounding ranges. Cattle and supply operations followed: George Shepherd of the central Owens Valley "raised cattle, horses, mules, grass, hay, and grain and hauled ore from the Inyo mines to San Pedro, bringing back supplies to Owens Valley" [4]. Surrounding forests "had been heavily logged and thinned out during construction of the mines and towns" by the late nineteenth century [5].

Federal protection arrived in 1907. President Theodore Roosevelt "created the Inyo National Forest by proclamation withdrawing 221,324 acres of land along the Owens River from settlement" on May 25, 1907 [2]. "A year later, one million acres of the Sierra Forest east of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo county were added," and in 1908 the Mono National Forest was established as a separate unit from parts of Inyo, Sierra, Stanislaus, and Tahoe Forest Reserves [2]. The Mono and Inyo were later combined in 1945 [2].

The defining twentieth-century event for the surrounding valley was the Los Angeles Aqueduct. "In 1905, the city filed for water rights on the Owens River" and "municipal crews began work on a 233-mile aqueduct capable of delivering four times more water than the city then required"; the aqueduct "was completed in 1913" [6]. Los Angeles then bought land and water rights across the valley and converted cropland to cattle grazing — "irrigated acreage in the valley dropped from about 75,000 acres in 1920 to 23,625 acres in 1940," and in 1924 "area ranchers and businessmen feared for the valley's agricultural future and waged a 'water war,' dynamiting the aqueduct 17 times" [6].

The Tinemaha area is now managed within the USFS Pacific Southwest Region and protected under the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

Vital Resources Protected

• Owens Valley Headwater and Spring Integrity: The 27,060-acre Tinemaha roadless area preserves the headwaters of North and South Fork Big Pine Creek, Fuller Creek, Division Creek, and the named springs (Tub, McGann, Harry Birch, Grover Anton, Scotty) that sustain dry-season baseflow across the otherwise arid Owens Valley. Without road-cut sediment delivery and culvert barriers, these cold reaches support golden trout (Oncorhynchus aguabonita, IUCN critically imperiled) and the riparian stringers that the IUCN-imperiled Inyo star-tulip (Calochortus excavatus) and Owens Valley checker-mallow (Sidalcea covillei) require on the valley margin.

• Elevational Climate Refugia Connectivity: Continuous unfragmented habitat from Mojave Creosote Desert on the valley floor through Great Basin Pinyon-Juniper, Jeffrey pine, red fir, lodgepole pine, foxtail and bristlecone pine subalpine woodland, and California Alpine Dry Tundra preserves the full elevational gradient species need to track climate change. American pika (Ochotona princeps), white-tailed ptarmigan (Lagopus leucura), and the alpine populations of whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis, federally threatened) depend on these high-elevation refugia and the cool air drainage that connects them to lower zones.

• Pinyon-Juniper and Mountain Mahogany Woodland: Extensive Great Basin Pinyon-Juniper Woodland and Intermountain Mountain Mahogany Woodland on mid-elevation benches provide a slow-growing, fire-sensitive habitat type that supports pinyon jay (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus, under federal review) and serves as the seed-cache architecture on which many Great Basin granivores depend. Roadless conditions preserve the deep duff and undisturbed soils that pinyon and curl-leaf mountain-mahogany seedlings need to establish.

Potential Effects of Road Construction

• Sedimentation and Riparian Disruption: Cut-and-fill construction on the steep canyon mouths of Black, Sardine, Spook, Charlie, and Armstrong Canyons would deliver chronic fines into Big Pine, Fuller, and Division Creeks, smothering the cold gravels used by golden and rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and degrading the spring-fed wet meadows that support Inyo star-tulip. In an arid basin, any altered flow path also redirects the precious shallow groundwater that the spring system relies on — once cut, that flow rarely returns to its original outlet.

• Severance of the Elevational Refugia Corridor: A road corridor crossing the elevational sequence would block the cool-air drainage and seasonal animal movement that allow species to track climate. Pika, ptarmigan, and Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis sierrae, federally endangered) cannot cross fragmenting corridors without exposure to predation and to thermal stress, and edge effects on the upper subalpine accelerate whitebark pine mortality through wind exposure and spread of white pine blister rust.

• Pinyon-Juniper Disturbance and Cheatgrass Invasion: Roadside corridors in pinyon-juniper and sagebrush at this elevation are the primary vector for cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), which converts fire-sensitive shrublands into annual-grass-driven fire regimes that pinyon, juniper, mountain mahogany, and bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata) cannot survive. Once a cheatgrass-fire cycle is established the woodland community does not return on a management timescale, and pinyon jay populations decline accordingly.

The 27,060-acre Tinemaha Inventoried Roadless Area sits on the steep eastern Sierra Nevada flank in Inyo County, California, within the White Mountain Ranger District of Inyo National Forest. The area is reached from US Highway 395 via the Big Pine and Independence approaches, with six developed trailheads and six developed campgrounds serving as staging points: Sage Flat, Upper Sage, Grays Meadow, Clyde/Glacier Group, Big Pine, and Palisade/Glacier Group Campgrounds.

The trail system is dense and ranges from short canyon walks to long Sierra Crest passes. The Sawmill Pass Trail (3401) climbs 9.3 miles from the valley floor to the Sierra Crest. The Sardine Lake Trail (3425, 6.5 miles), Armstrong Canyon Trail (33E401, 4.8 miles), Red Lake Trailhead Trail (33E301, 4.6 miles), South Fork Big Pine Creek Trail (3207, 3.2 miles), Birch Lake Trail (3302, 3.1 miles), Shingle Mill Bench Trail (3304A, 2.5 miles), McMurray Meadows Stock Trail (3301SD, 2.4 miles), Taboose Pass Trail (3304, 2.3 miles), and Red Lake Trail (3303, 1.9 miles) provide access to alpine basins. Shorter routes include the North Fork Big Pine Creek Trail (3205, 1.9 miles), Baxter Pass Trail (3427, 1.4 miles), Sage Flat Streamside Trail (3208, 1.3 miles), Waterfall Trail (3205A, 1.1 miles), and the Sawmill to Birch Springs connector (3430, 0.8 miles). Most are open to hikers and horses; all are native-surface and unimproved beyond basic clearing. Several lead to formal Sierra Crest passes — Taboose, Sawmill, and Baxter — that connect to the Pacific Crest Trail and Kings Canyon National Park.

Angling is a primary activity. Big Pine Creek, Fuller Creek, Division Creek, and tributaries carry rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), brown trout (Salmo trutta), brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), and the IUCN-critically-imperiled golden trout (Oncorhynchus aguabonita). California Department of Fish and Wildlife regulations and limits apply throughout, and golden trout populations are subject to special management.

Hunting follows the elevational gradient. Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), American black bear (Ursus americanus), wapiti (Cervus canadensis), and bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) are documented in the area; sooty grouse (Dendragapus fuliginosus) and chukar (Alectoris chukar) inhabit the subalpine and pinyon-juniper. CDFW zone tags govern all hunting. Note that the federally endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis sierrae) is protected; only general California bighorn populations are huntable in designated zones.

Birding is extraordinary here: 24 eBird hotspots fall within 24 kilometers. Tinemaha Reservoir alone has logged 250 species across 1,618 checklists. Big Pine Canyon's Glacier Lodge area has recorded 159 species across 914 checklists, and the Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery 155 species. Division Creek, Baxter Pass Trail, and the Black Swift Search Spot west of Big Pine all serve dedicated observers. Lewis's woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis), white-headed woodpecker (Leuconotopicus albolarvatus), gray-crowned rosy-finch (Leucosticte tephrocotis), Clark's nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana), pinyon jay (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus), and black swift (Cypseloides niger) occur across the elevational gradient. American dipper (Cinclus mexicanus) and willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii) work the creek bottoms.

Photographers and naturalists have opportunity to observe American pika (Ochotona princeps) and yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris) in the subalpine talus, white-tailed ptarmigan (Lagopus leucura) in the high alpine, and the ancient bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) and foxtail pine (Pinus balfouriana) at the upper subalpine. Roadless backcountry skiing and snowshoeing are practiced on the canyon shoulders in winter.

The recreational character of Tinemaha — long passes connecting to wilderness beyond, cold-water trout fisheries with critically imperiled golden trout, unbroken elevational birding across the eastern Sierra escarpment — depends on the area's roadless condition. Road construction across the canyon mouths or up the bench between Sawmill and Taboose Passes would alter the spring-fed creek systems, fragment habitat for pika and bighorn, and degrade the deep-backcountry character that draws climbers, packers, and anglers to this part of the Sierra.