Tioga Lake, Late Spring. Near Yosemite National Park, California. June 5, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Late spring at icebound Tioga Lake below Tioga Pass with Mammoth Peak and the Kuna Crest beyond in afternoon light.
I made and shared a slightly different photograph of this scene last summer, but when I did my annual end-of-year traverse of the year’s raw files I returned to the original set of images and wondered how I missed this one. In a lot of ways it is similar to the one I selected earlier, though the foreground light and shadow patterns are a bit different and, more importantly, I like the position of the clouds in this one more than what I had in the original. So, there are now two versions of this scene floating around…
After several fairly dry years in California, the winter of 2009-10 produced much more precipitation, as rain in the lowlands and as snowpack in the Sierra. Because of the heavier snow, Tioga Pass opened just a bit later than average, and when it opened there was still a lot of snow in the high country. Since this afforded a rare chance to cross the Yosemite Sierra in conditions not usually seen by drivers I made it a point to get up there as soon as the road opened.
On the drive there was snow along almost the entire length of Tioga Pass Road, and in many places it looked more like winter than like spring. At the same time, it was spring, and the melting of the snowpack was fully underway. While lakes like Tioga Lake, as seen in this photograph, were still ice-covered… the ice was thinning quickly, and everywhere the melting snow was creating creeks and cascades. The high country, especially at the elevation of the road, was filling with water – water in ponds, water in overflowing lakes, water in rivers, water in cascades and waterfalls. I was waterfalls along the road in places where I had not even suspected that there were creeks!
This photograph shows Tioga Lake, just east of and below Tioga Pass, the eastern entrance to Yosemite. The pass itself is in the low saddle just above the meadow ascending the hill at the end of the lake. Beyond, and inside the park, is massive Kuna Crest with white, snow-capped Mammoth Peak in full sun at the right end of the ridge.
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Derrald, I know those feelings well! Chris, I have never seen that much snow when the road opened before. The closest was in the mid-1990s one year when it didn’t open until July, and I came across a few days later to find people skiing the slope beyond the lake in the photo.
I was actually rolling through the pass that day myself on my way up to Mt. Whitney. I was shocked by how much snow there was, I feel like some of the snow drifts were at least 9 feet tall. It didn’t look much like spring at all up there.
I wish I had stopped at Tioga Lake actually but decided to hang out on the slopes around Ellery Lake (with some ominous cornices).
When I went back over the pass 3 days later it was amazing the transition that had taken place. Spring was clearly in effect and creeks and falls were bursting with melt water.
Gorgeous shot. I can feel the sun on my back and a cold breeze on my face, as though I was standing there.