Early Snow, Buried Plants. North Lake Area, California. October 8, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
An early fall Sierra Nevada snow storm buries meadow plants.
As I have written elsewhere, this year’s aspen color season got off to a rather strange start. Just as the first, high-elevation trees were starting to get their early peak color, an unusually cold series of winter-like storms swept over California and the Sierra during the first week of October. The storms dropped more than a foot of snow in some places, at a time of year when a few inches-deep dustings are more the rule. As the last storm came to an end, I crossed the Sierra via Tioga Pass literally hours after it was reopened, and headed south toward the Bishop area in the evening.
Early the next morning I drove up into the Bishop Creek drainage, encountering the first snow below 8000′. Shortly after passing the village of Aspendell I came to the junction with the gravel road to north lake. The road had not been plowed (and I later heard that it had been closed for several days) but I saw that a few other cars had headed up that way, so I pointed my all-wheel-drive vehicle that direction and drove the short, frozen road to the lower end of the lake. I parked here, loaded up my camera gear, and set off on foot.
It was cold! Before I finished a few hours later I was quite cold, which isn’t surprising since the temperature remained below freezing and I was working in snow. The storm had taken out quite a lot of the colorful aspen leaves. I photographed a few trees, but I also concentrated on other subjects such as fallen aspen leaves lying on the fresh snow. As I walked along the lake I realized that the scene really looked more like winter than like autumn, so I switched gears mentally and made some photographs of the snow that seem more like what I might shoot in the middle of winter. This photograph shows a section of the lakeside meadow that had been covered deeply enough with snow that in places only a few plants were still visible.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Thanks, Richard. The road wasn’t too bad on the morning I went up – apparently the morning after the snow stopped. A few vehicles had been up ahead of me, judging from the tracks in the snow, but I was glad to have all wheel drive!
I had actually experienced snow once before there. A few years back I drove up there before dawn. In the dim light I could see that the famous grove going up the hill on the far side of the lake was in full color. Soon, however, the wind picked up and snow began to fall as the temperature dropped. I retreated to my car, and when the snow stopped less than an hour later… it was a beautiful morning but half the leaves had blown down!
Nice one Dan. I haven’t been up to Bishop Creek during a snow storm before. I’d be kind of scared to drive that dirt road up to North Lake in those conditions to be honest but congrats on sticking it out and living to share. :-)