Fin Dome

John William Winkler

A fawn drinks from a pond near the foothills of Fin Dome, a narrow spike of granite that juts up from the ridge dividing Sixty Lakes Basin from Rae Lake in California’s Sequoia and King’s Canyon National Parks. John William Winkler employs sharp, defined lines that radiate outward to create an almost topographical look, lending dimension to the bulky, bouldered landscape.

Interestingly, this geological feature, familiar to hikers that traverse the Rae Lakes Loop, was named by the artist Bolton C. Brown in 1899. Then a professor at Stanford University, he would often explore California’s lesser known wildernesses, and would bestow names on various landmarks as he went in order to identify them in the future. “Fin Dome” was one in a string of features that he called “The Sea Serpent,” with the Rae Lakes Loop (then unnamed) trail being the body, the jutting granite rock the fin at the midway point, and a 11,000’ summit the head. While the other features were eventually renamed or simply left anonymous, “Fin Dome” stuck. More can be learned in Peter Browning’s Place Names of the Sierra Nevada: From Abbot to Zumwalt.