Paoha Island in Mono Lake is one of those legendary places. Beaches of obsidian, black lava flows, craters, lacustrine badlands, explosion pits, underwater landslide deposits, curious springs. Mark Twain recounted a 1860 visit in which they "found nothing but solitude, ashes, and heartbreaking silence." I'd been to the shores of Mono Lake many times since a kid, each time looking out at the strange and desolate landscape and thinking someday I would visit. The name Paoha comes from a Native American word describing hot springs and fumaroles, which unfortunately are mostly inactive at present. The islands can only be visited in the winter due to breeding migratory birds that stopover at other times. I had some fieldwork I wanted to do in the area so this seemed like a good opportunity to finally tack on a trip out to the island. The original plan was to camp overnight on Paoha but a fierce sundowner wind and a slow packing effort meant that by the time we got to the water's edge in the last light of day it seemed that waiting until the morning would perhaps be the better option.
And it was. Fortunately we awoke to glassy lake conditions that persisted the entire day. From near Black Point we paddled out through the shallows of the carbonate-coated pumice boulder field, aiming for the gap between Negit and Paoha. We passed the white textured southern shores of Negit, a particularly blocky carbonate-coated lava flow. At intervals we seemed to pass through dense drifts of brine shrimp, which were fascinating to watch twist, turn, and undulate, seemingly accomplishing little. It took nearly an hour to reach the northwestern shore of Paoha in our packrafts at which time we were both ready to ditch the boats for a 5 mile clockwise hiking loop of the island. We weighed down boats with rocks to be sure they were still here in the afternoon, and set off.
The northern shore was predominated by beaches of beautifully banded glassy obsidian, which made pleasant enough walking. We passed dozens of plugs of obsidian protruding up through melting cliffs of lake bed deposits, sometimes forming resistant towers. The details in the landscape were fantastic- artistic clusters of obsidian weathering out, badland intricacies, salt crystals forming a snowy landscape. We continued around to the blocky lava flow on the northeast corner of the island, then hiked up the nearby hills for sweeping views of the islands. Our feet would sink in with every step on the expanding clay of the lake beds- this island would be a nasty place to be in heavy rain! We traversed the hummocky topography southward, generally linking up ridges where there was slightly less brush to contend with. All the while we had panoramic views of the mirroring lake water, Mono Basin, Mono Craters, and eastern Sierra Nevada skyline. Overall it was not the most spectacular landscape, but the subtlety and uniqueness and yes, solitude and heartbreaking silence left me with a hushed feeling of reverence. Signs of life were infrequent. The air temperature was absolutely perfect.
We traversed down to the prominent eastern cove, and couldn't help a detour to check out the curious shaped ruins from an old TB sanitarium. A spooky place, but one that must have provided peaceful solace for those ailing, as they looked out to the untouched eastern shores of the lake. The voluminous spring nearby was disappointingly cold and alkalic.
We fought through the worst of the brush uphill past the explosion pit, and up to the high point of the island. We enjoyed the sweeping views and picked our route down through the badlands to the western shore. More badland intricacies and folded sediments. The presence of sizable boulders of granitoids were particularly mysterious and inexplicable.
We regained our boats and readied ourselves for the glassy late afternoon paddle back across the lake. The long shadows, delicate light, and incredible stillness made the 2.5 mile paddle back to Black Point particularly blissful. As we neared the carbonate minefield sunset colors started kicking in. It was one of the best sunsets I have seen in a very long time and a serene end to a great day of modest exploration.
We grabbed pizza to go in Mammoth (which hit the spot!) and drove on to spend a chilly night car camping on a small dry lake on an ancient landslide deposit in the middle of the Owens Valley. Some more fieldwork rounded out the next morning before driving on back to Riverside. Thanks to Sara for the company.
