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The highest point is White Mountain Peak, which at 4,342 m (14,246 ft) is the third-highest in California. There is a four-wheel drive road that reaches the summit from the south, and services the "Summit Laboratory" of the White Mountain Research Station. The west face is a scramble.
Ecologically, the White Mountains are like the other ranges in the Basin and Range Province; they are dry, with relatively few trees, but the upper slopes hold open forests of mainly Great Basin bristlecone pine with some Limber pine and Lodgepole pine, and of Single-leaf pinyon and Utah juniper on the middle slopes. One of the bristlecone pines, nicknamed 'Methuselah', is the oldest known tree in the world, about 5,700 years old.
The entire range is within the Inyo National Forest.