The Sierra Nevada is a range of white granite and jagged peaks forming the backbone of California. Ten thousand years ago the glaciers receded from these mountains that had risen to over two vertical miles from the sea in a few million years. Little has changed here since. From Cottonwood Meadows in the south to the Yosemite country in the north this great mass of rock encompasses an area roughly the size of a small New England state. Yet, not one road crosses this vast wilderness making California a land apart in fact and mind from the rest of the country. No other area in North America contains a more dramatic landscape.

  These mountains rose to their current elevation only 3 to 5 million years ago and are still rising. High alpine benches dotted with lakes usually situated at 10,000 ft. or more in elevation and ringed in jagged ridges and towering peaks dominate the landscape.  There are more than a dozen peaks over 14,000 ft., some of the highest in North America.  This is a landscape of extremes, blanketed in snow in the winter and often buffeted by thunderstorms in the summer.  In the winter, gale force winds from Pacific storms can deposit up to 800 inches of snow in a season. These winds sandblast the western exposure of Whitebark and Foxtail pines to their core, twisting them into deformed sentinels thousands of years old.  Above 11,000 ft. the trees give way to only a few grasses and flowers, leaving the peaks barren towers basking in the late evening alpenglow for which this range is especially known.

  The area depicted by Alan Sonneman in his paintings extends from Lone Pine at the southern end of Owens Valley to Mammoth Lakes, where the  San Joaquin River bisects this great block of white granite we know as the Sierra Nevada. This southern portion of the range, an area 100 miles long by 40 miles wide, is roughly the size of many of the states found in New England on the East Coast of America. This portion of the range is mostly encompassed by Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park. Several paintings are from Yosemite National Park fifty miles to the north. Here is the first of only a few narrow roads that traverse this vast wilderness.