We continued south on Hwy 395 passing through Lee Vining and reaching
SNARL an hour or so later in the early afternoon. We offloaded our vehicles of
our lab equipment and made a quick run into Mammoth Lakes for food supplies to
keep us going for a few days. The next morning we awoke, eager to tackle the rigors
of Mono Lake and its limnological mysteries and headed north. Unfortunately,
although it was only mid-October, a major winter storm was coming in from the
north with sufficient force to take it over the Sierras and into the Mono Basin. By the
time we reached Lee Vining, the sky had darkened and snow was gently coming
down as big downy flakes. Although there was no appreciable wind yet we wisely
decided to cancel the day’s excursion. One look at the vastness of the lake and the
puniness of our boat (the 14 foot Boston Whaler; pre-Revenge days), we decided to
call it off as too risky and head back to SNARL. Good thing that we did because the
wind soon picked up, and the snow came down harder, becoming a zero visibility
white-out. We had a full scale blizzard on our hands that persisted over the next few
days, piling up 3 feet of snow on the roadways, the wind being so intense that it blew
one of our vehicles clear across the icy tarmac parking area around SNARL. Luckily,
because we made a previous food/supply shopping trip into Mammoth when we first
arrived, we had enough grub to see us through the storm, which abated a few days
later giving the opportunity for the roads to be cleared and us having another shot at a
Mono Lake excursion under more clement conditions. This we were successful in
achieving, taking several vertical profiles of salinity, dissolved oxygen, methane,
sulfide, and turbidity. We returned to SNARL processed the samples and packed off
the next day for Fallon and a shot at the much tamer and gentler Big Soda Lake. We
had amassed our first data gathering on Mono, the first of many to come, and had
gained a very healthy respect for weather conditions in the region and how they can
shift quickly from mild to life threatening. It was a factor closely monitored when we
were engaged in the region and was nothing to be cavalier about.
We were eager for a return visit and made plans for an exclusive Mono trip the
following summer (1985), but we needed a base of operations closer to the lake,
hopefully in Lee Vining. We required to be housed of course, but just as important a
site where we could set up our analytical equipment much as we had done in the
Lariat garage. The Lakeview Lodge seemed amenable to our needs, having not only
a typical multi-level motel building out front but several old cabins in the rear as well
as storage rooms and a garage. It also had an area out back where we could safely
park our boat and make use of freshwater hoses to wash it (and the engines) free of
the corrosive Mono salts after each outing. The hotel was ran by the multi-generation
Banta family starting with great-grand-dad Bill, his son the patriarch and grandfather
Don, in turn his son Bill who ran the place, and Don’s three toddler grandsons Tim,
Matt, and Jeff. Over the years, these kids would watch us with wide eyes as we
towed the Revenge into the back reaches of their property, and their curiosity was
piqued further when they would peek into the temporary makeshift laboratory we
made out of their garage, or even to come into one of the back cabins we rented, a
darkened room in which we housed our epifluoresence microscope. The kids were
“wowed” by the unusual and on-site nature of our business, something they had
never witnessed before. The years flew by and we saw the kids grow through
31 Salty, Alkali-Laced Tales (Mostly True) from the Great Basin Desert, California. . .
667
SNARL an hour or so later in the early afternoon. We offloaded our vehicles of
our lab equipment and made a quick run into Mammoth Lakes for food supplies to
keep us going for a few days. The next morning we awoke, eager to tackle the rigors
of Mono Lake and its limnological mysteries and headed north. Unfortunately,
although it was only mid-October, a major winter storm was coming in from the
north with sufficient force to take it over the Sierras and into the Mono Basin. By the
time we reached Lee Vining, the sky had darkened and snow was gently coming
down as big downy flakes. Although there was no appreciable wind yet we wisely
decided to cancel the day’s excursion. One look at the vastness of the lake and the
puniness of our boat (the 14 foot Boston Whaler; pre-Revenge days), we decided to
call it off as too risky and head back to SNARL. Good thing that we did because the
wind soon picked up, and the snow came down harder, becoming a zero visibility
white-out. We had a full scale blizzard on our hands that persisted over the next few
days, piling up 3 feet of snow on the roadways, the wind being so intense that it blew
one of our vehicles clear across the icy tarmac parking area around SNARL. Luckily,
because we made a previous food/supply shopping trip into Mammoth when we first
arrived, we had enough grub to see us through the storm, which abated a few days
later giving the opportunity for the roads to be cleared and us having another shot at a
Mono Lake excursion under more clement conditions. This we were successful in
achieving, taking several vertical profiles of salinity, dissolved oxygen, methane,
sulfide, and turbidity. We returned to SNARL processed the samples and packed off
the next day for Fallon and a shot at the much tamer and gentler Big Soda Lake. We
had amassed our first data gathering on Mono, the first of many to come, and had
gained a very healthy respect for weather conditions in the region and how they can
shift quickly from mild to life threatening. It was a factor closely monitored when we
were engaged in the region and was nothing to be cavalier about.
We were eager for a return visit and made plans for an exclusive Mono trip the
following summer (1985), but we needed a base of operations closer to the lake,
hopefully in Lee Vining. We required to be housed of course, but just as important a
site where we could set up our analytical equipment much as we had done in the
Lariat garage. The Lakeview Lodge seemed amenable to our needs, having not only
a typical multi-level motel building out front but several old cabins in the rear as well
as storage rooms and a garage. It also had an area out back where we could safely
park our boat and make use of freshwater hoses to wash it (and the engines) free of
the corrosive Mono salts after each outing. The hotel was ran by the multi-generation
Banta family starting with great-grand-dad Bill, his son the patriarch and grandfather
Don, in turn his son Bill who ran the place, and Don’s three toddler grandsons Tim,
Matt, and Jeff. Over the years, these kids would watch us with wide eyes as we
towed the Revenge into the back reaches of their property, and their curiosity was
piqued further when they would peek into the temporary makeshift laboratory we
made out of their garage, or even to come into one of the back cabins we rented, a
darkened room in which we housed our epifluoresence microscope. The kids were
“wowed” by the unusual and on-site nature of our business, something they had
never witnessed before. The years flew by and we saw the kids grow through
31 Salty, Alkali-Laced Tales (Mostly True) from the Great Basin Desert, California. . .
667