Four unbelievable facts about the Sierra Nevada range you never knew

^{The Sierra Nevada}

Once you set eyes on the Sierra Nevada, you never forget it. With a mix of lush forests and austere rock faces, California’s most famous mountain range is home to stunning vacation destinations, such as Lake Tahoe and Mammoth Lakes, as well as a trio of spectacular national parks: Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon. But this epic string of peaks also impacts the everyday lives of Californians, year-round, as the state’s principal water source.

We spoke to two Sierra Nevada experts to uncover some lesser-known aspects of one of California’s greatest natural resources. Our first expert, Joe Medeiros, is editor in chief of the Sierra College Press and professor emeritus of biological sciences at Sierra College in Rocklin, Calif. Medeiros has hiked and studied the Sierras for over 35 years, including nine years as a Sierra park ranger. Our second expert, Larry Lawrence, is a natural resource manager for Arrowhead^® Brand 100% Mountain Spring Water. Lawrence has a deep knowledge of why the Sierra Nevada is important to California’s water and people — he grew up in California and has worked for the Arrowhead brand for over 20 years, where his work includes daily monitoring and measuring of the springs under his care.

The Sierra Nevada mountain range provides water for California

“The Sierras are the primary water source for the entire state [of California],” Lawrence said. “Our state water project is reliant on it, [as are] the aqueducts for Los Angeles.” The California State Water Project is a vast array of connected waterworks that collects water from rivers in Northern California and redistributes it to the state’s much drier, but very populous, south. Comprising 21 dams and more than 700 miles of canals, tunnels and pipelines, much of the SWP’s water originates in the Sierra Nevada, with the Feather River providing its main watershed (supplying Los Angeles and Southern California). San Francisco also relies on the Sierra Nevada for water.

The Sierra Nevada is one of the snowiest places on earth

Sierra Nevada, which translates as “snow-covered mountain range,” is aptly named. Winter storms can sometimes dump many feet of snow on its upper regions. This past year, several waves of heavy snowstorms produced Mammoth Mountain’s all-time record snow month, with over 20 feet in January alone.

“The Sierra Nevada is perhaps the snowiest mountain range in the world, in terms of the amount of snow per square mile,” said Medeiros. Certainly, both its Kirkwood Mountain and the town of Truckee, Calif., consistently feature in “snowiest places” lists. And as it melts, all that fluffy white stuff becomes crucial water for Californians.

“We can ski on it while we’re waiting for it to become available to us to grow crops,” said Medeiros.

^{A brown bear}

The Sierra Nevada separates two very different Californias

Extending 400 miles north-to-south but only around 70 miles east-to-west, the Sierra Nevada splits California in two.

“On the west side you have humanity and all of the developments that come with it,” Lawrence said. “On the east side, it’s much more sparse.”

To the west, the Sierra Nevada is bordered by the super-fertile Central Valley. Thanks largely to rain resulting from and snowmelt draining out of the Sierra Nevada, this valley is one of our planet’s most productive agricultural regions. To the east, however, lie barren lands.

“We have a mountain range that parallels the [Pacific] coast of the state and helps form this massive block for precipitation in the Central Valley,” Lawrence explained.

The Sierra Nevada is home to two-thirds of California’s animal species

As habitat to 276 species of birds and 112 mammal, 32 reptile and 25 amphibian species, the Sierra Nevada is a wildlife wonderland.

“It has a very, very high biological diversity,” Medeiros said. “More animal species than other mountain ranges.”

The Sierra Nevada boasts everything from black bears and beavers to bighorn sheep and a large variety of squirrels, chipmunks and bats. Seasonal animal visitors add to this array.

“It’s a migratory bird route; it’s a sanctuary for birds traveling from South America to Alaska,” Medeiros explained.

Just as the Sierra Nevada protects the birds and animals that populate its peaks and valleys, we Californians work to care for this natural wonder and help guarantee the continued health of our shared natural resources. That’s why long-term sustainability is a major goal of the Arrowhead brand: Managing their mountain spring water sources, and monitoring their surrounding environments, helps support that commitment to long-term sustainability in California.

—Paul Rogers for Arrowhead^® 100% Mountain Spring Water