Fourth Lake and the Palisades, Dawn. Sierra Nevada, California. August 12, 2006. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

First dawn light on the Palisades above Fourth Lake, Sierra Nevada.

This is a photograph from an eastern Sierra pack trip from a few years back that took us up into the area below the Palisades, the location of the largest glacier in the Sierra and a whole group of impressive and very tall peaks, some of which are visible on the skyline in this scene above Fourth Lake. The photograph was, perhaps obviously, made very early in the morning while the dawn light was still pink, and on a day on which the light was softened just a bit by some haze. We were camped on an exposed bench above this lake which gave us a truly wonderful view of the upper part of this basin.

Any time I talk or write about this trip, I get to tell a story on myself. A few days before we started I had gotten up at night to go do or find something in our home. Stumbling around in the dark I managed to jam my (bare) foot into some piece of furniture or another. I think we all know the feeling! It hurts more than you can imagine, but soon the pain goes away and we forget about it. Well, that is what is supposed to happen.

In this case, the pain didn’t go away. The toe swelled up and turned some interesting colors. My thought process was (based on a healthy dose of denial), I wonder if I broke it (I didn’t really “wonder” much at all), and I really should go see a doctor (I didn’t), and if it is broken I might not be able to go on my pack trip (which, obviously, I did do), because the doctor would tell me (no doubt, wisely) to stay off my foot. So, despite constant pain and swelling and limping I somehow managed to convince myself that it might get better on its own. And it a more stunning feat of denial, I managed to convince myself that it would be fine to go backpacking with a probably-broken toe.

I took it easy, and the uphill walk to this camp wasn’t too bad – though it certainly hurt. Once we got here, I chose to not accompany the rest of my group on a cross-country hike to visit Palisade Glacier, opting instead for a very short stroll to another nearby lake. We “base-camped” for the whole trip, so it turned out that I didn’t need to walk much at all.

Until we left. On the descent, my (gee, maybe it really isn’t) broken toe was jammed into the front of the boot for hours and miles, and at times I wondered just how much real damage I was doing and how much pain I could handle. When I finally got home I did go to the doctor, who basically (and with obvious justification) looked at me like I was nuts and said, yes, you broke your toe, but it is too late to do anything now. Lucky for me, nothing had been displaced and it healed just fine.

And I got this photograph.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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