Tenaya Lake, January 2012. Yosemite National Park, California. January 16, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Skaters and walkers on frozen Tenaya Lake, accessible via the still-open Tioga Pass Road on January 16, 2012.
I have been meaning to post this photograph since I made it last month, on January 16, 2012. The serious California drought (or so it seems) of 2012 created very unusual conditions in the Sierra this winter. The Tioga Pass Road (highway 120) through Yosemite National Park usually closes by some time in November, and has been known to close as early as October. The early season this year made it appear that we might have a normal or even heavier than normal winter – early storms near the beginning of October brought a lot of snow to the range and temporarily closed the road more than once. But by December it became clear that this was not going to be a normal year at all, and by the end of the month there was almost no snow anywhere in the range.
A week before this visit I had crossed and re-crossed the pass on a trip to Death Valley. While I appreciated the convenience and shorter drive, I found the odd conditions unnerving. Aside from a few patches here and there, I saw no snow at all, though the seasonal cold had frozen the high country lakes. A week later it looked like a storm or two might finally arrive, so we decided to make the trip up to the Tuolumne area to see the high country in a state that we probably (hopefully!) won’t see again. During the week before this visit, local news stations around California had made this story well known, and they almost all mentioned that people were visiting Tenaya Lake. And, indeed, there were tons of people at the lake when we arrived. There were about as many cars as you might see on an August afternoon. People were clustered along the frozen edge of the lake, were walking along its borders, even setting up tables for picnics on the ice. A few people thought to bring ice skates and they were skating great distances. (Fortunately for us, most people went no farther than Tenaya, and the crowds decreased rapidly after that point.)
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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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Chloe, it was a very different thing to see. I’ve seen the lake with ice in late spring when the road is first opened, but at that point the ice always shows signs of melting – pooled water, open areas, and so forth. But here, in the middle of winter, the ice has a very different character. It is thick and hard and virtually unbroken. (Though there are cracks, and the ice is “alive” as it expands and contracts. The sounds of this process were quite something!)
I wasn’t on the ice when I made this photograph. I was up on the bank of the lake, glad to have a bit of elevation so that I could get this perspective. However , we had wandered out onto the ice near the outlet stream a bit earlier.
A very different (and beautiful) perspective on Tenaya Lake! Were you actually out on the ice when you took this photograph?