This post is a book recommendation and a short story about a recent short pack trip in Yosemite.
Earlier this year Heyday Books and the Yosemite Association published First Light: Five Photographers Explore Yosemite’s Wilderness. The five photographers are Charles Cramer, Kark Kroeber, Scot Miller, Mike Osborne, and Keith Walklet. Between the five of them, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have well over a century of experience in the park exploring, working, and doing photography – it is hard to imagine a group of people with more intimate knowledge of the park and especially of the backcountry. (To give you an idea, the experiences of these photographers range from apprenticeship with Ansel Adams to years of work as a Yosemite Park ranger and much more.)
I don’t think there is a single shot of the typical “Yosemite icons” in this book – this is an exploration of images from the back-country and the photographs interpret scenes and experiences that most park visitors don’t get to share unless they take the time to leave The Valley and park roads and set themselves free on high country trails. Those who already know the back-country will identify quickly with the photographs in the book; those who have not experienced the Yosemite high country will get a wonderful introduction to the 95% of the park not experienced by most visitors – the best part of the park in my view.
The book is available from a number of sources including Heyday Books and should be available from the Ansel Adams Gallery, which had and may still have autographed copies for sale.
It has been my good fortune to know Charles “Charlie” Cramer over the years – in fact, Charlie played organ at our wedding! More recently I have twice been able to arrange my backpacking adventures so that I could run into the “five photographers” during their annual photographic expeditions into Yosemite. Last summer I planned to meet up with them at Fletcher Lake. I packed myself in for a few days but didn’t see them, until a few days into the trip when I was shooting above Townsley Lake. I spotted a heavily laden hiker approaching quickly around the side of the lake carrying so much stuff that I figured he must be a backpacker – but it turned out the be Keith Walklet, who seems to travel with a lot of gear! I found out that they were camped at Booth Lake, just below Fletcher, so I stopped by briefly the next day as I started my hike back to the trailhead.
This year I again scheduled a trip so that I could meet up with them briefly. They were camped out at upper Cathedral Lake for a week, and I managed to join them for two days. As one who often travels alone in the back-country and who has to minimize gear in order to keep the weight down, I have to say I appreciated arriving at their camp to find an extra chair that I could sit on as everyone sat around during the midday hours killing time between morning and evening photography! On the day I arrived they were having dinner at 3:15 p.m. so that everyone could be off looking for photographs by 4:00 p.m. or so. Everyone headed off to shoot and it wasn’t until way after dark that all came back to camp. The process essentially reversed in the morning – everyone was up and gone an hour before sunrise, and the group didn’t reassemble until mid or late morning.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.
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