I returned very late last night (Sunday, 10/4/ 2009) from a weekend trip to the eastern Sierra to photograph fall aspen colors. It was, as they say, an “interesting” experience – in many ways not quite typical but in others not totally surprising either.  On Saturday I posted “Bishop Creek Aspen Conditions – 10/3/09”  in the early afternoon, so this report takes up where that one left off.

After posting that first report from Starbucks in Bishop I drove back up into the Bishop Creek drainage. After getting a camp site at the Four Jeffrey campground (now a surprising $21/night!) I headed up the road toward South Lake to do some late afternoon and evening photography. The weather was not fully cooperative, to say the least! The predicted high winds were arriving in the eastern Sierra, and I think that anyone can understand the “perfect storm” of low light, high winds, and fluttering aspen leaves! I was still able to work with the conditions and get some interesting stuff, though it was a real challenge. To avoid writing the same thing twice, I’ll hold off on the description of the aspen conditions and cover that below as I describe Sunday shooting.

My final stop on Saturday night before putting the camera away for the day was at South Lake, where the wind was howling and the light was fading fast and the temperature was dropping. As I arrived two rather cold-looking backpackers flagged me down and asked, with a certain amount of intensity, if I would drive them down to Bishop. It turned out that they had just finished a 22 mile day, coming from just below Mather Pass, and were exhausted. Realizing that it was time to recharge my own supply of backpacker hitchhiking karma (e.g. – sometimes I need a ride back to my car!) I agreed to squeeze them into the car and drive them down to Bishop.

After arriving in Bishop and dropping them off at a motel, I headed to La Casita restaurant (almost across the street from Mountain Light Gallery) and met up with a group of folks from the Flickr Eastern Sierra Fall Color group. It was great fun to meet some faces that had only been screen names until then and to share some current information on the “interesting” conditions. After dinner I drove back up to my campground.

It was a cold (no surprise) and initially clear (slight surprise, given the earlier weather forecast) night with a full moon… though sometime after midnight some clouds rolled in. Before dawn some very light snow began to fall, but I only got a very light dusting where I was staying. When I woke up before dawn it looked like the higher elevation areas where I planned to shoot would be pretty socked in, but it also looked like the eastern edge of the cloudiness was about in my location – so I figured that I might change plans a bit and try shooting from the Buttermilks and get some shots of the early light on the storm over the eastern escarpment. With that in mind I spent an hour or so shooting in the high desert before returning to the aspens.

I don’t know if is my imagination, the different quality of the light diffused by overcast, the lightly falling snow, or perhaps it really happened – but it seemed to me that the colors had changed noticeably since the previous day. Places that I found difficult to shoot in the brighter light on Saturday because they weren’t as colorful as I had hoped turned out to seem much more colorful on Sunday. While a few favorite spots disappointed me a bit, there were lots of very colorful leaves – I just had to look a bit harder for them. I also thought that it seemed that some of the slightly lower groves were starting to show just a bit of color. Before leaving this drainage in the late morning I made a quick foray up to Sabrina Lake just to take a look around. As I ascended the snowfall began to increase, and when I left Sabrina it was really snowing.

In the end, my take on the conditions in the Bishop Creek drainage this past weekend – and some extrapolation to the future – goes more or less like this: Higher aspens that turned colors already (more or less on schedule) were affected by the cold and (especially) the wind. Some groves up high had lost all or almost all of their leaves – though this can also present some very interesting photographic opportunities. However, even in areas where all the leaves had been blown down the effect was somewhat selective and fine color could be found nearby with a bit of searching. A bit lower – in what I think of as middle elevations – the color change seems to be a bit behind schedule. There are good colors, but there is also still quite a bit of green. My hunch is that this will now change fairly quickly in the wake of the cold and snowy conditions. At lower elevations – say lower than Aspendell – most trees are still very green, though some color is just starting to show. In sum, if you go to this area in the next week I suspect you’ll find some great color but mostly not at the highest elevations.

After leaving this area I headed down to Bishop to get something to eat. (Since I started shooting early I really hadn’t had any breakfast!) I had hoped to pick up a sandwich at Starbucks – but the Bishop Starbucks apparently doesn’t stock them so I had to settle for something less filling. Ah, well! It was now getting close to 1:00 and my day would not end until I arrived back in the SF Bay Area so it was time to start the drive back to the north and then across the range to the west. I made a few stops along the way. I like the large trees among the pasture-land in Round Valley with the eastern escarpment of the Sierra as a backdrop, so I looped out toward Rovana and then around Round Valley, but the light wasn’t ideal and these trees were just barely beginning to pick up some color. For some variation I decided to take the old road up to Sherwin summit rather than following 395. There are some interesting views from this route back  that included some of the snow showers among the peaks. Higher up on this road there are also a lot of aspens… but they were completely green.

After rejoining 395 I continued north, marveling at just how much the snow had coated the higher peaks – it looked like a bit more than the usual “dusting” in many places. (People I spoke with mentioned that there might have been as much as six inches of snow in some places. ) I took a short detour up McGee Canyon, where the lower trees are still green but where there is quite a bit of color above the trailhead. It was quite something to see fall in the lower canyon and winter among the peaks! (Lower McGee Canyon should be worth a visit in a week or so.)

Back on 395 I again headed north, seeing some good aspen color down low in several spots along the highway. Although I did not stop along this section of the road, I could see that it was still snowing above the town of Mammoth Lakes and the the peaks of the Minarets were occasionally poking through some spectacular clouds. I kept driving since I wanted to grab an early dinner before trying to shoot a couple more locations on the way home.

As I drove north I heard that various passes had been closed. Of most concern – but of little surprise – I heard that the NPS had closed Tioga Pass into Yosemite. I obviously could not see the conditions myself there, but the NPS is somewhat notorious for closing the road for the tiniest bit of snow. (I wish they would reconsider this policy a bit.) When I arrived at highway 120 the pass was indeed closed. I stopped for a quick dinner at Whoa Nellie Deli, and when I finished the “closed” sign was still up. Since Sonora Pass was also closed – groan – this meant that my return route would have to be much longer and go over Monitor and Carson Passes.

I passed Lundy Canyon – which by some reports received quite a bit of snow – so I have no direct report on conditions there. I hoped for colorful conditions at Conway Summit but this was not to be. I did stop, and the unusual snowy background somewhat compensated for the general lack of color in the aspens. A few have started to turn, but most are still very green. This should also be good in a week or so – and if you have not seen Conway in full color you should go there. I continued north and by the time I passed Bridgeport the clouds, the mountains to the east, and the late hour were decreasing the light quite a bit. There were pockets of color here and there but nothing really sticks out in my mind.

I finally arrived at the turn-off to Monitor Pass at about 6:20 and, given all the other closed passes, wondered what the conditions might be on top. A mile or two before the summit I looked back to see some wonderful last light on clouds, snow-coated peaks, and interesting mountain/valley shapes, so I stopped to make my last photographs of the day in the cold and wind. I continued on to the summit a few minutes later as the light failed, so did not stop here. From what I could see in the dim light, the trees on Monitor Pass still had a surprising number of leaves. (In the past they have often seemed to lose their leaves rather early.) It was difficult to gauge the amount of color, but I don’t think that the high trees will be good much longer.

It was getting quite dark when I arrived in Markleeville after 7:00 p.m. so I headed on down to Woodfords and the left turn toward Carson Pass and highway 88. I wish I could say something useful about the aspens in Hope Valley but in light snow and darkness there wasn’t much to see. At the junction to South Tahoe there was a sign saying “chain control 5 miles…” but there was no chain control set up when I go there, so I breezed right on over Carson Pass. There was steady light snow falling but the road was completely clear. It looked like a few inches of snow had fallen earlier, and it seemed like the extensive aspen stands below the pass still had many leaves.

To summarize, it seems like a bit of an odd year for aspen color. The higher trees seemed to have changed pretty much on schedule, but then many (though not all) were affected by wind and cold, leaving many groves with dull color and/or leafless. On the other hand it seems to me (and others I’ve spoken with) that the lower trees are a bit slow to change this year and in many places where I might have expected to find some color the trees were still very green. While this was not quite good news for me, it suggests that those who will go up in the next week or even a bit later may find some good color. Finally, the unusual conditions on this trip – color transition happening in odd ways plus early snow storm – reminded me of the importance of being flexible and looking around. For example, on the mornings when my planned aspen color shooting was going to be tough because of wind or heavy overcast I simply switched gears and found some special conditions for photographing the east face of the Sierra down lower. When I found that the wind was making leaves difficult to photograph I turned my attention to the forms of the aspen trunks.

I like to say that there is an infinity of things to photograph and an infinity of ways to photograph them – so if the thing you are planning to shoot doesn’t work out… look around.