Re: A View from Red Hills Recreation Area - What Peak Is This?

Hi All!

Last weekend my wife and I went for a short hike at the Red Hills Recreation Area near Chinese Camp. It was a nice spring day and we spent it trying to keep from twisting our ankles on the rocky trail.

We were here: https://caltopo.com/l/ABM9

an area we'd never investigated before.

At one point we reached the top of a small hill and had a nice 360 degree view that included some distant Sierra Peaks.

We were standing on the red dot here:





A photo from my phone barely shows the snowy peaks. We were looking East/South-East is my best guess.





I saw a fairly striking peak (mountain? formation?) but couldn't identify it. Here's a closer view:




And here is a slightly blurry version I took with my superzoom camera:




Can anyone identify this peak or area? It looks like Granite, so I belive it's south of the Sonora Pass area. I'm just curious what we were looking at. Given the distance and blurry-ness, I suppose this could be two formations, one in front of the other, separate by a few miles.

I tried using Peak Finder but still wasn't able to identify it.

Thanks!

Whoa! Those photos are big! Well at least you get lots of resolution.

Neat.

Without question it's Mt. Conness.

I think the one on the left.. is Smith Peak. I'd have to look at some pix to see if so.

The one question I have is... below the Plateau to the right of Conness… it almost looks like a dome.
I don't know about that. Something interesting … I'll find a pix...

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Dunno. I'll stick with Smith and Conness (w/o question it's Conness)

Here's Conness from Smith:



You can see Smith from The 120 after Groveland... I'll try to stop and take a picture next time.
(maybe next week... maybe week after... )

Tanks for sharon

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2019 07:46AM by chick-on.

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chick-on
Dunno. I'll stick with Smith and Conness (w/o question it's Conness)

Here's Conness from Smith:



You can see Smith from The 120 after Groveland... I'll try to stop and take a picture next time.
(maybe next week... maybe week after... )

Tanks for sharon

Awesome! Thanks for the reply and info. I think the photo you provided is definitive. Cool that it was Mount Conness!

Amazing that you can see all the way across the park to Mt. Conness from that location. 40+ miles laterally and 2+ miles vertically! I suppose it helps that the sight line roughly parallels the Tuolumne River and especially the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne.

Smith Peak certainly seems to fit as the much nearer snow-covered peak to the left. And maybe Cold Mountain for the mystery dome beneath the plateau?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2019 09:48AM by FatFlatlander.

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FatFlatlander
Amazing that you can see all the way across the park to Mt. Conness from that location. 40+ miles laterally and 2+ miles vertically! I suppose it helps that the sight line roughly parallels the Tuolumne River and especially the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne.

On one clear afternoon I was able to see Mt. Conness from the Westley rest area, which is just south of the I-580/I-5 junction. I confirmed with binoculars, but unfortunately didn't take a photo (it was a "between two parked big rig trucks" kind of view and not particularly photogenic...)

Has anyone else tried this? http://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=SV0A99AI

The link goes to their ready-made Half Dome view but you can get the Red Hills view by entering the latitude and longitude 37.838293, -120.465022.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2019 01:09AM by gophersnake.

Quote
gophersnake
Has anyone else tried this? http://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=SV0A99AI

The link goes to their ready-made Half Dome view but you can get the Red Hills view by entering the latitude and longitude 37.838293, -120.465022.

I couldn't remember the name of this website and ended up at Peak Finder, but this was the resource I was actually looking for. Very cool, it says it's 63 miles away. Thanks for the link.

Made a quick map of the viewshed from that point. As chick-on suspected, it was Smith and Conness, along with less notable peaks and hills. Just the tops of some hills are barely visible and this analysis presumes perfect conditions. Also, it doesn't take into account the trees on the foreground hills, but overall a neat map.