Aspens in Snow. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 9 ,2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Autumn aspens and pines in an early season snow storm, eastern Sierra Nevada
Along the way on our snowy drive down the east side of the Sierra on highway 395 in early October we managed to take quite a few short side trips and detours, and we frequently stopped to make photographs. As we approached Mono Lake we decided to take this side road up into the eastern Sierra to check out the aspen color possibilities, half thinking that the road might be closed due to the late season and the falling snow.
It wasn’t closed – I really don’t think anyone was really watching it. This is usually a place where I might look for aspen color a little later in the season than in some of the higher elevation areas further south, so I wasn’t certain that we would find much color until we got fairly high in the canyon, which requires a drive up a rather narrow and winding gravel road. But very close to the start of the canyon, and still at a relatively low elevation, we began to see some intense aspen color. Rather than stop, we continued on up into the narrow section of the road beyond the closed “resort,” and we stopped up there to photograph a beaver pond that floods an area alongside the road. After stopping briefly at the trailhead, we headed back down and stopped again at that area in the lower canyon where we had first noticed the brilliant aspen color. The overcast and lightly falling snow intensified the colors of the aspens and set them off against the darker coniferous trees.
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.