page_title: Sierra Nevada Batholith
hierarchical_section_title: Sierra Nevada Batholith
caption_attribution_description: Half Dome
context_page_description: The Sierra Nevada Batholith is a large batholith which forms the core of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, exposed at the surface as granite.
  The batholith is composed of many individual masses of rock called plutons, which formed deep underground during separate episodes of magma intrusion, millions of years before the Sierra itself first began to rise. The extremely hot, relatively buoyant plutons, also called plutonic diapirs, intruded through denser, native country rock and sediments, never reaching the surface. At the same time, some magma managed to reach the surface as volcanic lava flows, but most of it cooled and hardened below the surface and remained buried for millions of years.
  The batholith – the combined mass of subsurface plutons – became exposed as tectonic forces initiated the formation of the Basin and Range geologic province, including the Sierra Nevada. As the mountains rose, the forces of erosion eventually wore down the material which had covered the batholith for millions of years. The exposed portions of the batholith became the granite peaks of the High Sierra, including Mount Whitney, Half Dome and El Capitan.
context_section_description: The Sierra Nevada Batholith is a large batholith which forms the core of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, exposed at the surface as granite.
  The batholith is composed of many individual masses of rock called plutons, which formed deep underground during separate episodes of magma intrusion, millions of years before the Sierra itself first began to rise. The extremely hot, relatively buoyant plutons, also called plutonic diapirs, intruded through denser, native country rock and sediments, never reaching the surface.  At the same time, some magma managed to reach the surface as volcanic lava flows, but most of it cooled and hardened below the surface and remained buried for millions of years.
  The batholith – the combined mass of subsurface plutons – became exposed as tectonic forces initiated the formation of the Basin and Range geologic province, including the Sierra Nevada.  As the mountains rose, the forces of erosion eventually wore down the material which had covered the batholith for millions of years.  The exposed portions of the batholith became the granite peaks of the High Sierra, including Mount Whitney, Half Dome and El Capitan.  Most of the batholith, however, remains below the surface.
caption: Half Dome, Yosemite, a classic granite dome of the Sierra Nevada Batholith
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