In April of 1776 Padre Pedro Font on the second de Anza expedition gave that name to the mountains that could be seen in the distance to the east. Its most common nickname comes from John Muir, who in 1894 wrote in The Mountains of California[?]:
This description is due to the unusually light colored granite exposed by glacial action.
A unique peculiarity of the Sierra Nevada is that, under certain wind conditions, a large circular tube of air begins to roll on the south east side. This "rotor" is so perfectly symmetrical that it drives a series of higher counter-rotating rotors. This effect proceeds higher than most aircraft are able to reach. All recent world altitude records set in unpowered aircraft were set in the Sierra Nevada Rotor, most flown from Mojave Airport.
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