Things Are Tufa All Around Rangers at Mono Lake Reserve

Janet and Dave Carle are California’s tufa rangers.

They are the only year-round tufa rangers in America, possibly in the world.

“When we’re far from home and out of uniform and someone asks our occupation, we say we’re guides and guardians of tufa,” said Janet Carle. “ ‘Tufa? What’s tufa?’ everybody asks.”

Tufa ( too-fah ) is a unique limestone-like substance found in outcroppings around a few of the most unusual lakes on earth.

And Mono Lake, a cratered Ice Age leftover, is perhaps the best known of the tufa lakes. Here on the shores of ancient and mysterious Mono Lake, dramatic tufa formations decorate the foot of Yosemite’s Tioga Pass.

Imaginative visitors to the lake “see all kinds of things in the tufa,” said Dave Carle, “They say they see mammoth mushrooms, or camels, horses, or elephants. They see a woman holding child, a couple arm-in-arm, and even giant cement cauliflowers.”

Calcium carbonate tufa spires, knobs and towers are created by thousands of calcium-bearing fresh water springs welling up through the alkaline waters and briny lake bottom of Mono Lake. When the calcium and carbonate combine, the product is a limestone-like precipitate.

In 1982, the state established the Tufa Reserve here to protect what the Carles say is “one of the greatest concentrations of tufa on earth.”

The designation helps preserve and protect the spectacular tufa formations and other natural features found along the shores of the million-year-old lake, one of North America’s oldest.

When the Tufa Reserve was established, Dave Carle, 39, and his wife, Janet, 36, became the first California State Park rangers assigned here.

“We share one ranger position, get one paycheck between us,” said Dave Carle. “There are a half-dozen shared ranger jobs in the state park system, but we’re the only husband-wife team.”

The Carles, who have two sons, say their eight-year assignment has been an exciting one. Both are veteran rangers--Janet for 13 years, Dave for 15.

By sharing their tufa ranger post, Dave Carle is able to pursue his other career as a mystery writer. His first book, “Hitting The Wall,” stars a state park ranger and is scheduled for publication this fall by Cliffhanger Press, Oakland.

Together, the Carles have pioneered the trails in the 7,000-acre reserve, finding paths around the state-owned portion of the 13-mile-long and eight-mile-wide lake. The remainder of the shoreline is U.S. forest.

“We take turns patroling the area, conducting nature walks, doing maintenance work, providing information to visitors,” said Janet Carle.

Visitors to nearly any region of the lake find themselves surrounded by exotic tufa formations. Some canoe through tufa outcroppings. Some swim with tufa--or float, actually, since submersion is almost impossible in a lake that is more than twice as salty and 1,000 times as alkaline as the Pacific Ocean.

The water of Mono Lake feels soapy and slippery. Its unusual properties have been documented by many of its visitors but most famously perhaps by Mark Twain, who 130 years ago wrote:

“Its sluggish waters are so strong with alkali that if you only dip the most hopelessly soiled garment into them once or twice, and ring it out, it will be found as clean as if it had been through the ablest of washer woman’s hands.”