The Pine Mountain Lake plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Pine Mountain Lake’s center stands about 2,860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,130 ft to 3,360 ft, a difference of 2,230 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Duckwall Mountain, about 5,800 ft, 8 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Paleozoic marine rocks, undivided, unit 4 (Western Sierra Nevada) (argillite, quartzite, phyllite), from the Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Argillite, quartzite, phyllite. Age: Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic, greenstone. Age: Paleozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Peridotite, serpentinite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Pine Mountain Lake reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Big Creek, the Tuolumne, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 170 river miles.
Lake on the way: Don Pedro Reservoir.
80 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pine Mountain Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
