Alpine Lake, Morning. Eastern Sierra Nevada California. August 7, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A solitary sunrise angler stands on shoreline rocks at an alpine Sierra Nevada lake reflecting a nearby peak
During the first weekend of August I joined a group of friends for a quick backpacking trip into the eastern Sierra Nevada along the northeastern boundary of Yosemite National Park. This wasn’t primarily a photography trip so I went light, carrying a smaller system with only one lens and packing a very small tripod. The first day of the trip was, as we like to say, “interesting.” We woke up to cloudy skies that virtually guaranteed rain, and that guarantee was fulfilled in the late afternoon: I had just time to set up my tend before three hours of rain commenced! The next morning was clear, and after drying out I headed on up the trail to this beautiful lake along the crest.
After five years of historic drought and the resultant loss of permanent snow fields and damaged to vegetation, it is wonderful this year to see the changes created by last winter’s record snowfall. There are still snow banks everywhere, and even in August there were many snow crossings. On the morning after our night at this lake I got up at dawn and walked to a high place with a panoramic view of the lake and its surroundings. Just as the first sunlight began to stream across the shoulder of the peak across the lake a lone angler came to the shoreline and (thank you!) began to fish from a granite outcropping, framed against the reflection of the peak and morning sky.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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