Nameless Lakes

Nameless lake note
Sara Lake. The first of the "Nameless Lakes" to be added.

By: Mike Mullen | Added over 10 years ago.

After setting out to photograph the lakes of Desolation Wilderness I was quickly confronted by the question of what to do about all of the mapped lakes that are not marked with names. A quick glance at the Desolation Wilderness map shows that there are perhaps as many lakes without names as with. Should I attempt to photograph all of the nameless as well as named lakes? Or ignore them, and focus solely on the lakes named on the map. Including them would nearly double the size of the project, and add the complication of labeling them in some useable and intelligible way. Ignoring them seemed like the thing to do until I found that many were irresistibly beautiful. What to do?

Additionally, for me one of the defining qualities of Desolation Wilderness is all the water, the creeks and destination lakes with alluring names, as well as the snowmelt ponds in springtime and the small anonymous pools and tarns seemingly around every corner in certain parts of Desolation.

After much thought, I decided to add a section for these nameless lakes and only include the ones that I found most pleasing, with no goal of cataloging them all. To this end I have created a “Nameless Lakes” section. I have also given these lakes nicknames and numbered them roughly in the order of when I photographed them, so a typical entry in the Nameless Lakes section follows the naming convention of Lake Name – NL#1, for example Sara Lake – NL#1.


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