Talk:San Jacinto Peak

Steepness

I deleted the part of the opening sentence saying "sheerest in North America". First, that implies it is immensely steep, which it is not, as compared to, e.g. El Capitan. Second, it's not even close to the biggest face in all of North America (compare Mount McKinley/Denali), and it is not quite the biggest in the contiguous US (compare Mount Rainier). Now, it may be true that Rainier is the only other place where you can get more than 10,000 feet in 7 miles, and if you declare that not to count as an "escarpment" (since it's volcanic), then the photo caption could perhaps be changed back. But it would need a careful reference. -- Spireguy 02:16, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Need reference for escarpment statement

Within the San Jacinto Mountains is San Jacinto Peak, world-renowned as the steepest
escarpment in North America.

Found in: page 8 of chapter 3-"Affected Environment" from Proposed Management Plan for the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument/FEIS ( PDF format)

Just because this is a FEIS document does not mean it is accurate. My question is: where do I go to double-check this statement?

Sincerely Marcia Wright (talk) 05:00, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I see it on a lot of websites. As far as reliable source go, this one doesn't quite confirm it, Laboratory/SanJacinto/proposal.pdf Proposal to Establish a Site in the San Jacinto Mountains as a National Underground Science Laboratory PDF. "The San Jacinto escarpment is one of the steepest and tallest fault bluffs in the United States." Another article, apparently from a local lifestyle magazine, "Santa Rosa & San Jacinto Mountains National Monument: A celebration of beauty and history in e Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument" says, "e northeastern face of San Jacinto is one of the steepest escarpments in the United States." So maybe we should change it to "one of" until we find a source for a more absolute assertion.   Will Beback  talk  06:10, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Darn I knew I'd screw this up- Will-the article does say "one of". I was asking where to go to check on the statement in the box above that is from the FEIS (Final Environmental Impact Statement). In other words checking a fact before citing it in a Wikipedia article, also called a second source, (ideally there should be three per fact statement.) The website you give looks reliable-I agree the statement should stay as "one of" . In thiinking about this, the appendix of the RDF should have a list of refs, I'll check that out. Marcia Wright (talk) 04:31, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Three sources per fact? Perhaps if it is an extraordinary assertion, but routine assertions just need one good source. Considering that the peak is the 6th most prominent in the lower 48 states, this doesn't seem extraordinary. But more info is always better.   Will Beback  talk  05:40, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Certainly the excarpment in question is big, and for such a large vertical relief, relatively steep. But does it really mean anything to say that it is "the steepest", or "one of the steepest"? An escarpment that is 10 feet high but dead vertical would be steeper. So I find any such statement suspect. -- Spireguy (talk) 15:29, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Plus, there are no strict rules about what is and what isn't an escarpment, nor exactly how to determine the bottom and top except perhaps in the most obvious cases (the same issue occurs with waterfalls that are not a simple plunge--most involve some waterfall-like / cascade-like parts). And, is San Jacinto's north face really an escarpment at all? In the usually sense as described on the escarpment page? I think of escarpments as sudden changes in otherwise fairly level terrain, with a long bluff-like cliff, rather than something one finds high on a mountain. But I could be wrong. Pfly (talk) 16:37, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I was wrong. A quick search turned up sources that might be of interest here: University of California Publications in Botany (p. 7), ...San Jacinto Peak...the fault on the northeast side being 8000 to 10000 feet high. Geology of the San Jacinto Mountains, the core of the San Jacinto Mountains [is] the Southern California Batholith. ...[earthquake activity along] several parallel faults...lifted the eastern face of the batholith more dramatically than the western face, creating a sharp escarpment on the northern and eastern side of the range. San Bernardino Mountain Trail (p. 143), ...a stupdendous rock escarpment, soaring...almost 10,000 vertical feet in in five horizontal miles. ...as rugged a precipice as exists in the United States. The North American Deserts (p. 95), ...San Jacinto Peak, the north face of which is considered to have the greatest sheer drop of any mountain in the United States. Introduction to the Geology of Southern California and its native plants (pp. 208-209), San Gorgonio Pass...bounded on the south by the abrupt fault scarp of the San Jacinto Mountains. And The San Andreas fault system, which has lots of geologic information about the region, but it is over my head. So it is clearly a fault-type escarpment. It is interesting how these sources differ over the wording about it--most "rugged precipice" of the US, "greatest sheer drop" (or "considered" to be), etc. For this article I would want to avoid superlatives, except perhaps "one of the most..." type statements. Better to summarize the facts about it being a fault escarpment of dramatic height. I'd avoid words like sheer and steepest. A 10,000 foot gain over 5 miles is a lot, but far from "sheer". I know of a place in British Columbia with a gain of about 8,000 feet over less than a mile, "near-sheer" (see Cayoosh Creek for more about it, and yes, this is not in the US and most sources say "most rugged/steep/etc in the US, but the wikipedia page says used to say "...in North America"). Pfly (talk) 17:38, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Well maybe I'm running this into the ground, but if it IS the steepest in N.A., the article should state that. Mt Whitney is not "one of..." etc. So, I e-mailed Bureau of Land Management asking what their source was, and they kindly sent me a PDF of a newspaper article (Palm Springs Desert Sun 8-22-04 p.E3) written by James Cornett M.S., Curator of Natural Sience, Desert Museum and staff biologist with UC Extension. I know this satisfies Wikipedia policies , so please check it out and let me know if this reference is good enough to change the article's sentence. Regards, Marcia Wright (talk) 00:05, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The Desert Sun appears to be a mainstream newspaper, and Cornett doesn't appear to be a gossip columnist, so it would be considered a reliable source.   Will Beback  talk  00:48, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

First, let me reiterate that the word "steepest" is absolutely incorrect in this context. "Steepest" means "closest to vertical." Any dead vertical drop, of any size, is far steeper than this one. The fact is, there ought to be a single word in English which means "some combination of big and steep", but there isn't, so people use "steep" incorrectly when they mean "big and steep", or more precisely, "steep considering the particular (large) scale of this feature". So I would not support putting the phrase "steepest escarpment in the (whatever)" in the article. The article already notes quite explicitly that the escarpment is relatively steep for being so big. Why change it?

Now, the escarpment is very tall, and it may be the tallest in the contiguous U.S., or even in the U.S. or in North America. But e.g. the Sierra Escarpment, measured from the top of Mt. Whitney, is right around 10,800 feet to the bottom of the Owens Valley. And I wouldn't swear that some of the (significantly) bigger vertical drops in Alaska are not primarily fault scarps. (You can't have a large nonvolcanic mountain without a lot of faults, after all.) So I would be a bit unsure of a statement that definitively said it was the tallest even in the contiguous U.S., and very dubious about one that went any further in geographic scope. The only reference given above for an absolute superlative is for "steepest", which is clearly incorrect, so I don't think there is any reason to change the article at present. -- Spireguy (talk) 03:15, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

It is my understanding that "steep" refers to the angle, if the angle moves to straight vertical , it is then "sheer" or "precipitous"-close to vertical. I ideally would like to know from where Mr Cornett got his statement from, tracing the source, as it were. I cannot find an e-mail for him even though he has a regular newspaper column as well as listed on the UC directory. I am working on expanding the national monument article, so this discussion here is important as I was considering adding the statement to that article as a direct quote, referenced, of course. I'll reconsider that. Regards, Marcia Wright (talk) 05:22, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe the difference between San Jacinto and the Sierra Navada escarpment is that many peaks of the highest peaks in the Sierra are set back from the valley floor with intervening foothills or hanging valleys. One of the more dramatic escarpments is probably Lone Pine Peak. However its summit is about 9.5 miles from the low point of the valley, which is about 9000' lower. The difference between San Jacinto and the nearest low point of Banning Pass is about 9300 and a distance of 6.7 miles. Now the Owens Valley is far broader than the Banning Pass, but it shows that the values are comparable. Or another way of putting it is that the lowest point five miles from the summit of Mt. Williamson (14,381') is at about 5600' (net diff=8791'), while the lowest point 5 miles from SanJac is at about 1400' (net diff=9434'). That's not a huge difference, but it's significant.   Will Beback  talk  06:09, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I have long believed that superlatives are the #1 source of misinformation (get it? get it?)--on Wikipedia and in general. There may well be a number of reliable sources that claim something is the steepest, tallest, most this or that, etc, but even so I think it is wise to err on the side of caution. The phrase "one of the..." means it is among the most whatever-is-being-measured and may even be the most. I like that for suggesting the possibility of being the #1 most but leaving open the possibility that there may be something even greater out there somewhere. If others find "one of the..." too weaselly, then perhaps superlative claims should explicitly say who is making the claim, in the text as well as the footnote. Also, I agree with Spireguy that the word "steep" is a poor choice of words. Just some thoughts from Wikipedia's #1 anti-superlative editor! Pfly (talk) 06:26, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Good points here. And for the record, I've read alot of debates on various talk pages regarding truth vs. reliable/verifiable and I would put myself closer to the truth side of the scale. Misinformation has no place on Wikipedia, even if well-intended/good faith effort. I found this statement from BLM's webpage on the NM: Down below in the Coachella Valley, elevations range from below mean sea level to several hundred feet, resulting in an abrupt vertical relief of more than 10,000 feet on the steep eastern face of San Jacinto Mountain, and exceeding the vertical relief in most other parts of the contiguous United States except Death Valley. (emphasis mine). So the statement in both articles should remain "one of.." to avoid accidental misinformation. Good argument, thank you. Marcia Wright (talk) 14:18, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for doing all of this research. I can't see any escarpments in Death Valley as abrupt as San Jacinto. Telescope Peak has lots of foothills. There may be shorter mountains that are steeper than Snow Creek, even if not as tall. I guess it gets back to the question of how to define "escarpment" and how to weigh steepness versus net altitude gain. Anyway, we're on safe ground calling it "of one".   Will Beback  talk  18:35, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Accuracy of Muir's statement

The article currently says, "Naturalist John Muir wrote of San Jacinto Peak, "The view from San Jacinto is the most sublime spectacle to be found anywhere on this earth!"" This statement may not be accurate. In The San Jacintos, a book I have, the authors write about the quote (page 195, footnote 1), "We have been unable to verify that John Muir ever climbed San Jacinto Peak. He visited Thomas Ranch with the National Forest Commission in 1896, but stayed only one day and did not approach the mountain." Chisme (talk) 00:43, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

References