Across the divide

One of my favorite day hikes follows the Pacific Crest Trail from Carson Pass up to Meiss Col and down into beautiful Meiss Meadow, from which you can proceed to lovely little Showers Lake and/or elsewhere. An interesting feature of Meiss Col, which had not occurred to me until this visit, is that it lies along the divide between the Pacific and the Great Basin watersheds. So at the point where the first picture below was taken, looking roughly southward toward Round Top, any rain or snow melt in front of me would run downhill into various creeks and eventually into the American River, the Sacramento River, and the Bay, before emptying into the Pacific; whereas behind me, the water drains into the Upper Truckee River (e.g. from the snowfield in the second picture), into Lake Tahoe and then out of it into the Truckee proper, which finally drains into Pyramid Lake, an endorheic lake within the Great Basin. Endorheic is a new word for me: water checks in but it doesn't check out. Well, evaporation notwithstanding. Two raindrops or snowflakes that fall quite near one another on Meiss Col could end up thousands of miles apart. Of course there may be some hapless little raindrop that falls at the very divide and languishes there, like Buridan's ass, unable to decide which great watershed to join. Such a drop may happily end up nourishing one of the many western blue flag irises that flourish in the col. (The map below thanks to Wikipedia... don't forget to send them money.)