Piper Mountain Wilderness
| Piper Mountain Wilderness | |
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IUCN category Ib (wilderness area)
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 Map of the United States
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| Location | Inyo County, California |
| Nearest city | Bishop, California |
| Coordinates | 37°19′22″N 117°55′37″W / 37.32278°N 117.92694°WCoordinates: 37°19′22″N 117°55′37″W / 37.32278°N 117.92694°W |
| Area | 72,575 acres (29,370 ha) |
| Established | 1994 |
| Governing body | Department of the Interior / Bureau of Land Management |
The Piper Mountain Wilderness is a federally designated wilderness area located in the White Mountains 20 miles (32 km) northeast of Big Pine, California in Inyo County, California.
The Wilderness Area was created by the 1994 California Desert Protection Act, and encompasses 72,575 acres (29,370 ha) of Great Basin wildlands, east of the Owens Valley and west of the Eureka Valley.
There are three separate units of the wilderness, separated by vehicle corridors, with elevations from 3,430 feet (1,050 m) to 8,805 feet (2,684 m).
The landscape is characterized by steep mountains, narrow canyons, sloping alluvial fans and level floodplains. It includes a subrange of the Inyo Mountains called the Chocolate Mountains, a northwestern section of the Last Chance Range and the upper end of Eureka Valley which is immediately north of Death Valley National Park.
The highest peaks of the wilderness are in the Chocolate Mountains and include Mount Nunn (7,815 feet) and Lime Hill (6,532 feet). The wilderness's namesake Piper Mountain (labeled 'Chocolate Mountain' on topo maps) rises to an elevation of 7,546 feet (2,300 m).
The vehicle corridors that break the continuity of the Piper Wilderness Area into three parts were a concession made when the area was added to the California Desert Protection Act.
Desert vegetation include xeric shrublands of Cresote bush (Larrea tridentata) in the lower valleys. Plants in the higher elevations include: Shadscale (Atriplex confertifolia), Littleleaf Horsebrush (Tetradymia axillaris), Stansbury cliffrose (Purshia stansburiana), Desert-olive (Forestiera pubescens) and Mormon tea (Ephedra californica) on . North-facing high elevation slopes are studded with Single-leaf Pinyon (Pinus monophylla) and California juniper (Juniperus californica).
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