Lake and Rain, Dusk. Kings Canyon National Park, California. September 13, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A late-evening rain shower above the smooth surface of a rocky Sierra Nevada lake
From our camp site at a narrow point in the canyon among all of these lakes, we more or less had the option of going upstream to a group of several nearby lakes that were visible from our camp, or of going downstream and around a bend to an equally large group of lakes that were about 10 minutes away. The choice was often difficult – we didn’t always go the same direction, sometimes we might go upstream in the morning and downstream in the evening, or vice versa as the mood would take us. This, again, is an advantage of remaining in one area for an extended time – in our case we camped here for six nights with the primary goal of exploring and photographing.
On this evening I decided to go up-stream. Early on the trip I had made a very brief visit to what we regarded as the “upper lake” – though, in truth, there was one more further up the drainage that was likely inaccessible to us. On that first visit I had taken a direct route to the outlet stream of the lake and had then looked around a bit at this lower end before the light faded and I headed back to camp. On the evening when I made this photograph I started earlier, and instead of taking the direct route I went more slowly and wandered a bit, exploring the very interesting terrain among the lakes. Somewhat to our surprise, light rain cropped up again late in the day, and by the time I was approaching the upper lake there were showers here and stronger showers further down the canyon. Just before actual sunset, the sky turned intense pink as a bit of rain fell on the lake, imparting purple and pink tones to the landscape, and far down the canyon there was a faint glow from an area where the clouds cleared and a bit of blue sky shone through.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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.
Nice shot. Can I assume you were backpacking?
If this were any other trip into the back-country in the past 4+ decades, you could have made that assumption. The first time I visited this spot many years ago, it was on my first solo backpack trip, a two week affair that took me from Lodgepole in Sequoia National Park, to Bubbs Creek, and around the Rae Lakes Loop through Paradise Valley to Cedar Grove. I’ve since backpacked through this portion of the Sierra many, many times.
But this trip was different. The group of photographers with who I traveled have been photographing the Yosemite back-country for over a decade, supported by the Yosemite Conservancy and using pack trains to access remote areas of the park. So their preference on this trip was to use pack animals. So, for the first time in my long back-country life I entered the back-country on the back of a mule!
At some point I’ll have to write more about my thoughts on that experience. For decades I have been the hiker who was mildly irritated by having to pull off the trail as the dusty pack trains went by, and I often looked at the folks riding the pack animals with a sense of superiority to those who seemingly weren’t able to travel the back-country under their own power. And now I found myself on the other side of that relationship. (And, yes, I could tell that a few folks were eyeing me that way!) I also am now more aware of and (at least partially sympathetic to) the historic nature of the use of pack animals in the eastern Sierra, something that has been going on since the mid-1800s.
Dan
It’s very cool that you had an opportunity to do this type of a trip. What a privilege. It also sounds like pack mules is the first class way to do it in the High Sierra! It’s also a good thing you were able to make the trip before the park shut down. I hope it’s not for long.
I’m going to be on vacation in the Eastern Sierra next week to photograph the changing landscapes of autumn. It’s actually thanks to your blog post a few years ago on photographing the Sierra in autumn that I picked next week to do this trip. I would assume there will be more than enough to shoot, just by taking the side roads all up and down US-395 headed in the direction of the Sierra, without encroaching too deeply on federal land?
You should be hitting the eastern Sierra at just about the right time for great fall color if you go next week, though things do seem to be starting just a bit earlier than usual this year – no surprise, given the back-to-back drought years.
I typically target a time about one week into October, at which time I can often catch the tail end of the higher elevation color in places like upper Bishop Creek and the main peak of color in areas that are just a bit lower in that drainage and other similar locations. From what I’m hearing, this year the higher color may well be spent by the end of the first week of October, but it takes a couple of weeks for it to complete the process of working down to the lowest elevations, so there should be a lot of opportunities in the lower canyons.
There is a good chance that I’ll be out there myself sometime in the next week or so.
The pack train option has its pluses and minuses. On the plus side, it is possible to get a better selection of photographic equipment into the backcountry. Although I still traveled light – taking a bit more than 15 pounds of cameras, lenses, and tripod – some of my colleagues took more gear: medium format system, smaller systems, even video. It is also, frankly, easier to get over some very high passes on a mule than on foot. We crossed both Kearsarge and Glen Passes, in addition to some additional climbing. I’ve done all of this before on foot, more than once, and it would have been a serious challenge to cover this ground with this gear on foot.
On the other hand, there are some negatives. As a long time backpacker, I’m still just a bit uneasy about the impact of pack trains – though less so by far than I used to be. (I now also have a much greater appreciation for the historic role of pack trains in the Sierra and for the difficult work that the wranglers do.) I also see the country a lot differently when I’m on a mule than when I’m on foot. This is a mixed bag. In some ways, I see more from the mule, since I’m less focused on the small details of the trail as I must be when hiking. I noticed that I paid more attention to the big picture while on the mule. On the other hand, it is much more difficult to stop while traveling in the pack train. Stopping the animals and the others in the group, dismounting, and setting up camera equipment is basically not an option – so the travel days were mostly days with no photography.
Oh, and saddle stock are not comfortable! I’m still dealing with sore knees two weeks later! :-)
Yesterday someone asked me, after I had talked about the balance of issue here, whether or not I would do it again. My answer was, more or less, that I’d prefer to travel on foot… but for a trip like the one I just did, I would certainly go by mule again.
Dan
Thank you for the thoughtful and well written response.
I make it up to the Blue Ridge Parkway (which is a tough place to beat in October) almost every fall, but this will be my first time seeing a Western fall. This doesn’t count a couple of late December trips to the Bay Area, where I was shocked to see peaking fall colors after Christmas!