Lee Vining is a tiny town on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, at the foot of Tioga Pass and the edge of Mono Lake, and it is the eastern gateway to Yosemite. At nearly seven thousand feet, with a few hundred residents, it has a main street along Highway 395 of cafes, motels, gas stations and a store, a mountain town with a desert view. The air is dry and sharp, and the light, bright and clear, is the kind that makes the mountains look cut out of paper.
Mono Lake, just below the town, is one of the oldest lakes in North America, at least seven hundred and sixty thousand years old, and it has no outlet, so the salts and minerals carried by the streams have built up over time, making the water salty and alkaline. Calcium-rich springs bubbling up beneath the surface have built tufa towers, strange, pale pinnacles that were exposed when the lake level dropped. Brine shrimp and alkali flies feed millions of migratory birds, and thousands of California gulls nest on the islands.
The lake has a political history too. In 1941, Los Angeles began diverting the streams that fed it to supply the city's water, and the level dropped by forty-five feet, exposing the tufa and threatening the birds. A citizens' campaign, which began in the late 1970s, took the city to court, and in 1994 the state ordered the diversions reduced, allowing the lake to recover partly. The story is a landmark of environmental activism, and a visitor centre in the town tells it well.
The Tioga Road climbs from here to Tioga Pass, at about ninety-nine hundred feet the highest highway pass in California, with a steep climb up Lee Vining Canyon in a series of bends and switchbacks, then enters Yosemite National Park, the way to meadows, lakes and granite domes. The road is usually closed by snow from November to late May, and the opening date varies. There is fuel in Lee Vining, and it is sensible to fill up here, as there are very few services on the high road. Mammoth Lakes, about thirty-seven kilometres south, is the larger town. Dress warmly, and watch for thunderstorms in summer.