The Granite Chief Wilderness is a 19,048 acre (77 km2) federally designated wilderness area of the Tahoe National Forest. Created by the California Wilderness Act of 1984, it is located in the Sierra Nevada mountains west of Lake Tahoe in California, USA. It is managed by the US Forest Service and the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. Elevations range from 4,800 feet (1,500 m) to 9,019 feet (2,749 m) at the summit of Granite Chief.
Events such as the Western States Endurance Run and the equestrian Western States Trail Ride, (popularly called The Tevis Cup) cross portions of the wilderness. The Pacific Crest Trail also passes through along the east edge of the wilderness.
This region is extensively glaciated and has features such as hanging valleys, cirques and U-shaped valleys, but few lakes. Just outside the wilderness boundary there are two large recreation reservoirs, Hell Hole Reservoir to the south and French Meadows Reservoir to the west.
The Sierra Club had maintained the Bradley Hut, which was a ski hut located at the Five Lakes Basin, but in 1994 the Sierra Club was asked to remove the hut by the U. S. Forest Service as it was now inside the newly created wilderness. The hut was dismantled and relocated four miles (6 km) away. Because no mechanical equipment can be used in a wilderness, the dismantling of the Bradley Hut took until the fall of 1996 to finish.
Read more about Granite Chief Wilderness: Lakes and Waterways, Flora and Fauna, Recreation
Famous quotes containing the words granite, chief and/or wilderness:
“Hell is paved with great granite blocks hewn from the hearts of those who said, “I can do no other.””
—Heywood Broun (1888–1939)
“Our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, or rather an intimate debate between God, our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, griefs, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations—all these belong to our secret, and are almost all incommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, and even when we write them down.”
—Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881)
“There were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his phrases,
As he sat there reading, aloud, the great blue tabulae.
They were those from the wilderness of stars that had expected more.
There were those that returned to hear him read from the poem of life,
Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips among them.
They were those that would have wept to step barefoot into reality....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)