Mono Lake covers 65 square miles in California’s eastern Sierra Nevada. It’s more than a million years old, has no outlet, and holds no fish. It does hold trillions of brine shrimp, calcium-carbonate towers rising straight out of the water, and enough migratory birds each year to rank among the most important stopovers in the West.The lake sits off Highway 395, 13 miles east of Yosemite, just outside Lee Vining.