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The Sexiest Mountain in America, The Nipple - CA · Off You Pop!

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is Off You Pop, the podcast for hikers and adventurers who want to be epic in just one day.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're tossing the standard polite geographical guidebooks directly out of the window.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're traveling down Blue Lakes Road into a rugged windswept basin on the border of the Mokolumni wilderness.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're heading into a place that holds what is undeniably the most provocative title in geographic history.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is the story of the sexiest mountain in America.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at an unofficial United States Geological Survey topographical map, you will see a peak rising sharply above the tree line at 9,342 feet.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is not named after a famous pioneer, a senator, or a surveyor.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is named with absolute blunt accuracy The Nipple.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's easy to laugh at the name, crack a joke at the trailhead and move on.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if you do that you miss a stunning, deeply moving story.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're using that unforgettable silhouette to crack open a deeper theme, the geography of solitude.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to trace a thread that spans millions of years.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: We'll explore how a violent subterranean volcanic eruption created a highly specialized sanctuary for some of the rarest alpine plants on Earth, and how that exact same isolated high altitude pasture became a living canvas of loneliness for immigrant Basque sheep herders.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is the nipple, and this is Off You Pop.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: To understand why this peak stands in such stark, isolated prominence against the sky, we have to look at the violent death of a tectonic plate.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Around ten to twenty million years ago, a massive sheet of oceanic crust known as the Farallon Plate was diving beneath the western edge of North America.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: As it sank into the mantor it melted under intense heat and friction, sending massive chambers of superheated volatile magma surging upwards through the crust.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: This tectonic engine gave birth to a chain of massive roaring stratovolcanoes known as the Ancestral Cascades Arc.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: The king of this specific basin was the ancient round top volcano, located just a few miles to the north.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: The nipple is a direct child of that volcanic system.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's what geologists call a volcanic plug.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine a massive active volcanic vent blasting ash, brechia, and pyroclastic debris into the sky.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Toward the end of the volcano's life, the pressure subsided and the eruption slowed down.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: The remaining lava inside the main pipeline, a thick, pasty, silica-rich broth of andesite and dacyte, stopped moving.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: It choked inside the throat of the vent and began to cool slowly under immense pressure from the surrounding mountain walls.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because it solidified inside that protective underground earthen chamber, the minerals locked together into incredibly dense, weather-resistant cores of rock, developing microcrystalline structures far tougher than the loose ash surrounding it.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Over the next several million years, the soft outer ash cones of the volcano were completely obliterated by wind, rain and ice.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then came the Pleistocene epoch, when massive glaciers marched down from the Sierra Crest.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: These rivers of ice scoured the landscape, carving out deep stepped granite basins and leaving behind the pristine shimmering waters of upper and lower blue lakes.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: But the glaciers couldn't flatten the hardened volcanic plug.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Instead they sculpted it, leaving a prominent rounded volcanic mound topped by a sharp vertical knob of resistant lava, the literal plumbing system of a dead volcano.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: The Blue Lakes look wild, a pair of cold alpine bowls tucked beneath the nipple, ringed by volcanic ridges and meadows that glow in the morning light.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is stranger.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: This basin isn't just a natural amphitheatre carved by ice, it's a place humans rebuilt, reshaped, and repurposed.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: A wilderness with infrastructure, a quiet place with a loud history.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: The first dam went in more than a century ago when ranchers and early water companies realized these glacial bowls could store melt water for the valleys below.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: They built simple earthen dams, handworked, mule hauled, nothing fancy, just enough to raise the lake levels and create a reliable reservoir.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Later in the early 20th century, the dams were rebuilt in concrete, turning blue lakes into a formal part of the Mokalumi watershed system.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Water from these basins flowed into the river, then into the foothills, then into the central valley, and eventually into the taps of people who've never heard of the nipple.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a strange contract, a remote alpine basin feeding distant cities.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And yet despite the dams, despite the engineering, despite the fact that Blue Lakes is technically a piece of water infrastructure, the place feels profoundly solitary.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: The moment you step away from the campground and walk into the meadows, the human noise disappears.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: You hear wind in the aspens, you hear the creak of old dam timbers warming in the sun, you hear nothing else.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: This solitude has always been part of the basin story.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Washu families camped here in summer moving quietly through the meadows.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Basque sheep herders grazed flocks here carving their loneliness into aspen bark.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Crews built roads and camps, then left.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Anglers came from the trout, then went home.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the dams, the only permanent human structures, sit quietly at the water's edge, half hidden, half forgotten, and still doing their jobs.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: The Blue Lakes are a paradox, engineered but wild, altered but untouched, a place where human hands shape the water but not the feeling.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: The nipple rises above it like a volcanic sentinel, watching over a basin that's been used, abandoned, rediscovered, and loved in cycles that stretch back more than a century.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: If the nipple is the sculpture, Blue Lakes is the studio, the place where geology, ice, water, and human ambition all collided to create a landscape that feels both designed and accidental.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And when you stand on the dam at sunrise looking up at the mountain of volcanic stone, you feel the solitude that every person who ever lived or worked here must have felt.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: A basin built by glaciers, altered by engineers, haunted by sheep herders and loved by hikers, and still, somehow, quiet.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: When you stand at the edge of Blue Lakes today and look up, you're witnessing a landscape split in half.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Your boots are resting on cold, smooth, grey glacial granite, but your eyes are locked on a crumbling red and purple fortress of ancient volcanic fire.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: The unique way this volcanic rock shatters and erodes does something remarkable.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: It dictates the chemistry of the soil.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: As the plug slowly decays, it sheds a highly specific, mineral-rich debris that washes down the slopes, high in iron, potassium and magnesium, but completely devoid of traditional organic nutrients.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it is this exact chemical footprint that lays the foundation for the next layer of solitude.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: As you leave the granite basins of the Blue Lakes and begin the steep switchbacking ascent up the Pacific Crest Trail towards the summit of the nipple, the landscape shifts dramatically.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: The forest thins out and vanishes, and the ground beneath you becomes an unforgiving desert of loosed, shifting volcanic scree and thin nutrient-poor soil.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: For 99% of plant species, this place is an absolute death sentence.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: The high altitude winds here blow with enough force to rip petals to shreds.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: The summer sun bombards the soil with intense UV radiation, and moisture evaporates almost instantly.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, if you look down at your boots, you realize you're walking through an open-air, evolutionary sanctuary.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: This brutal isolation is precisely where some of the rarest plants in North America have staged a brilliant tactical takeover.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because regular grasses and aggressive weeds cannot tolerate the harsh volcanic soil chemistry or the extreme exposure.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Highly specialized alpine species have evolved to claim this niche.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: As you push closer to the summit block, look closely at the open scree.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: You'll see the Sierra Cushion wild buckreet and Gordon's mouse tails.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: These aren't tall, proud plants, they are structural masterpieces.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: They grow into incredibly low, dense, compact cushions that hug the contours of the volcanic rock.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: By forming a tight mat, they trap their own heat, create their own microclimates, and significantly reduce water loss from the wind.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Their roots are like wire cables driving deep into the volcanic fractures to anchor themselves against the gales.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: But this adaptation comes at a cost time.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: In this brutal environment, a plant the size of a silver dollar might take decades to grow.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: The ecosystem here is so fragile and the soil is so loosely held together by these tiny alpine survivors that a single misplaced step can destroy a century of growth.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: The peak demands absolute respect.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: It survives because it's uncompromisingly isolated and protected by its own hostile geology.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it was that exact same high altitude isolation that drew the next characters in our story.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Humans who were just as isolated as the plants beneath their feet.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: To find the human footprint of the nipple, you have to descend from the barren windy screfields and enter the emerald green subalpine meadows and quaking aspen groves that surround the Blue Lakes.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the American West was expanding, and the sheep industry was booming.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: To manage millions of sheep grazing across the rugged Sierra Nevada, livestock companies needed men who could handle months of absolute crushing silence.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: They turned to immigrants from the Pyrenees Mountains, the Basque sheep herders.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: These young men were dropped into the high country in the spring with nothing but a horse and a couple of herding dogs, a supply of salt pork, and thousands of sheep.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: For months at a time they lived in total solitude under the shadow of the nipple, moving the flocks through the glaciated valleys.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: They had no radio, no newspapers, and no human contact.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: To cope with the overwhelming loneliness, they turned to the landscape itself.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: They transformed the smooth white bark of the Quakean aspen groves into a living diary.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Armed with nothing but a simple pocket knife, they carved their thoughts, their names and their histories directly into the trees, creating a massive open air gallery of folk art known today as arboglyphs or the mountain Picasso.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: When a herder sliced into an aspen, the tree would secrete a dark, thick sap to heal the wound, permanently sealing the carving into a raised black scar.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you walk through the old groves near Blue Lakes today, you can still read their minds.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: These carvings are a raw, uncensored look into the psychology of isolation.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Many herders carve their names, their hometowns in northern Spain or France, and the exact dates they stood at that meadow.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Others use the bark to vent their frustration, carving political slogans like Gora Uscari, up with the Bass Country, in defiance of the oppressive regimes back at home.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: But predominantly the trees speak of a longing for connection.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: The bark is filled with poems of homesickness, tallies of days spent alone, and incredibly detailed stylized drawings of the women they left behind across the ocean.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: There is a profound, beautiful tragedy to this art.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Quake and aspens are short-lived trees.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: They rarely survive past a hundred to one hundred and fifty years.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Today, as you hike past the lakes under the gaze of a volcanic plug, these historic groves are reaching the end of their lifespans.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: The trees are falling, rotting, and taking the literal voices of those lonely herders down into the Sierra soil with them.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's a vanishing archive of human solitude.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: When you pull all these threads together, the true nature of this peak reveals itself.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Millions of years ago, a violent volcanic eruption left behind a dense, unyielding plug of stone.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: That stone weathered over millennia, shedding unique minerals that allowed a fragile, beautiful kingdom of rare cushion plants to claim the ridges.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that very same rugged glaciated basin created the isolated high-altitude pastures where lonely Basque herders sat in the shade, carving their souls into the white bark of the trees.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: When you stand on the trail and look up at the provocative, unmistakable shape of the nipple, you aren't just looking at a funny name on a topo map.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking at the monument to the beauty of being left alone.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's America's sexiest mountain, not because of a crude joke, but because its story is written into molten stone, rare petals, and the scarred fading memories of the wilderness.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is the nipple.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get on the pop.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I drove down Blue Lakes Road, heading for the junction with the PCT.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: The nipple was going to be my third hike of the day, and it was one I was kind of looking forward to because it was one of the Tahoe ogles, and the name, to be honest, kind of intrigued me.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: How much did this mountain look like a nipple?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so as you're trolling towards it, it becomes evident quite immediately that the silhouette of the mountain contains the shape of both a breast and a very prominent nipple.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's no avoiding it, there's no getting away with it.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm putting out there to begin with, before I begin this on the pop version, and there will be some gratuitous schoolboy references to nipples throughout this walkthrough because I couldn't help myself but be thinking about all the innuendo of this particular mountain.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: But nonetheless, I pulled up.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was late morning, and when I got to the trailhead, there's sort of a lay-by by the trailhead.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: The trailhead isn't clearly marked, but there were plenty of cars there, and so I just edged my Jeep onto the lay-by and snuck in and stole the last parking lot.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I got out in the it was fairly sunny, a little breezy here in the in the blue lakes, and you just have to be a little bit careful because the road itself is sort of on a bend.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: You have to cross the road to get to the trailhead.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: But as soon as you get to the trailhead, you are in classic Sierra Alpine territory.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of these soft, rounded boulders sitting in between a forest of pines.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And to my surprise, the trail itself was relatively flat.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was very soft and smooth making my way up the nipple.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't actually particularly difficult at this point, and it was well shaded in the trees, and so it felt like a fairly easy ascent.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: As I'm climbing up, there are a couple of places where there's a little bit of an uphill climb, but nothing dramatic.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're on the PCT at this point, and the PCT in a lot of places is pretty flat and it's fairly well graded and it's well traveled, and so the train itself isn't isn't particularly rugged.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so it really feels really soft underfoot as you are as you're climbing out on the outer edges on your way to the nipple itself.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: About an hour in, the well starts opening up, and you can see through the trees your first close-up sight of the nipple, and it is very distinctly different from where you're at.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And as you get closer and closer and you come out of the forest, you cross this threshold where you're in this alpine forest with soft grey boulders strewn around into a distinct dividing line where you step into the plane of a volcano where the trees give up and you're immediately completely exposed.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And before you is the nipple.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing else between you and it.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's a distinct, large breast shape directly in front of you, with the small cone of the nipple on top.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the wind is picking up, whipping across this very dry, arid, and very different environment.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's no mistaking that this was a volcano, and you're standing on sort of the apron of the spewing ash and magma that was being spewed out of the volcanic plug that is at the very center.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: You are in a very different environment.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: The trail itself, though, the PCT continues to be fairly well graded.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not ever particularly steep, but you start to make your way across this very dramatic landscape, getting further and further away from sort of the soft safety of the forest and more into this very exposed region.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the PCT sort of heads to the west of the nipple, and you sort of feel like you're going the wrong way, but it will suddenly switch back, transect the nipple to the south.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now the PCT does not go up to the nipple, and so at some point you have to make a decision on how you're going to get to the top of the peak.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I start climbing up past the nipple itself, back to the back breast, if you like, and start making a little bit of altitude.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: I decide at some point I need to turn off and make the ascent.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what you don't know if you are looking at a map and you haven't been here before is that there actually is a trail that comes off of the PCT a little way back and will take you up to the nipple, but it's not on the map.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I made a decision I'd reached sort of the high point of the PCT, and I found a gully that was sort of barren.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: It had some mule ears in it, but there was a rocky bottom that was definitely a creek.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: In snowmelt, this was a channel for water, and so I didn't feel too concerned about taking this up.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it would be the least damaging approach because I was basically stepping on bare rock, and so I made this decision to climb up this fairly steep gully up to the ridgeline, and it was it was taxing and it was slow going, but it was pretty solid until I got a little bit closer to the top.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And as I'm sort of two-thirds of the way up, I can see other hikers following, based on their pace and the way they were walking, a trail.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, God, I've I've gone up too early and I've made life very difficult for myself.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And indeed I had, as I continued up to the ridgeline, the gully turned into basically a scree run.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: So now I'm stepping in very loose, slippery scree, completely barren, but something that works the legs a little bit.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I just slowly make my way up to join the trail, which if I'd been just a little bit more patient, I would have found probably another couple of hundred yards along the PCT.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So do do that when you're coming up here.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: There is no need to suffer the indignation of slogging your way off trail up a gully.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you just follow the PCT, go past the nipple itself, maybe 400 yards or so, you'll connect with a trail that will make easy work of it for you to get up to the peak itself.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, I I rejoined the trail and I've seen a couple of other people heading up to the nipple.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I start heading that way, and it really isn't that far from this point.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: I came up over a little forced summit, and there were three people with their dog huddled underneath a little rock outcropping, eating their lunch.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then I noticed in front of me this large boulder, which was the nipple itself.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so the nipple is quite big, it's fairly large and prominent and uniquely shaped, almost exactly like a nipple.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I I come up to it, I see there's a little bit of a crack on the west side of the nipple, a little bit of a rock ramp.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a tiny little bit of a scramble to get on top, nothing too challenging.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody should be able to manage it.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: The nipple was topped with a couple of young hikers, a couple of young men who had already made it up there and just relaxing on top of the nipple, just enjoying the view.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I just asked them if it was okay if there was room for another one up there, and they they let me also get up and enjoy the comforts of the nipple.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now the wind is raging a little bit, it's blowing against the nipple, and you just see the most spectacular view of this wilderness area up behind the original round top mountain, the whole Carson range area that is just spectacular.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can see peaks I've climbed before in the distance, but I've never seen them from this angle, and it's just such a spectacular dramatic landscape.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I'm sitting there and I'm chatting with these young guys and say, Well, I don't know about you perverts, but I've had enough touching the nipple, I'm gonna head back down.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so you know I left them, got off the nipple with some reluctance, and started to make my way back along the ridgeline.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the three hikers who had been having their lunch were just starting to descend directly down the ridge, and so I thought they were following a trail, and I started to follow them down, and I realized pretty quickly they weren't following a trail, they were following a scree run, and the scree run itself looked pretty barren, so I just followed them down at that point.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was already committed back down to the PCT, making pretty quick work of it, and then it was just making your way across this very exposed volcanic region, and you could just tell it it was this old volcanic flow that had come out of the nipple and sprayed across the landscape and left this sort of dramatic red scar in the middle of the Sierra Alpines.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the the contrast is just spectacular coming out of that forest and seeing this broad, barren waste that's been carved into this beautiful dome shape with the crescendo of the nipple at the top.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I gave it one last look before I dove back into the forest and made my way back to the trail.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the whole hike only took maybe two and a half hours, and the ascent to the nipple itself was a little bit steep, but there is a trail, and the rest of it is just very beautiful and well graded and not very challenging.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's really an enjoyable hike with possibly one of the most spectacular views you're going to see in the northern part of the Sierras.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so, highly recommended.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Great morning hike, good area for climbing lots of other peaks and camping as well.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so, highly recommended the nipple, the sexiest mountain in America.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, off you pop.