Nearly Bare Aspens. Great Basin National Park, Nevada. September 27, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Aspen trees with only a few leaves remaining, Great Basin National Park
In this post I continue, at least a bit, the theme of my last post: the varied rate of fall color change. In the previous post I wrote about the variations in the eastern Sierra Nevada — how early the first signs of color can occur, how late in the season it may be when the final aspen leaves fall, and the varying rates at which the colors arrive, even in limited geographical areas of the range. But if you stretch your horizons beyond the Sierra the variations are even greater.
We first “discovered” this a few years back when we visited Utah in the fall. I often make a point of not doing too much research before visiting a new area, and often this has the advantage of letting me discover the place on my own terms. On the downside, sometimes I miss the timing a bit! On that Utah trip I assumed that the colors might change on the schedule I’m used to in the Sierra… and we ended up arriving too late for the best aspen color. On the trip where I made this photograph I assumed that, since the location is virtually on the Nevada-Utah border, color would come earlier, and I arrived about a week before the end of September. In fact, the color change was underway, though still not quite peaking. But in a few spots, including the little grove where I made this photograph, some trees had almost completed their fall color season already!
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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That is a very interesting observation!
I “discovered” that early fall color schedule in Utah some years ago. We weren’t really aware of the timing in Utah, so we headed east at about the same time that we would typically visit Eastern Sierra color, arriving in western Utah a couple of days into October… to discover that we were near the very end of the aspen color transition. There were still photography opportunities, but they were mostly about finding a few trees with some leaves in the midst of mostly bare trees.
At that point I understood the earlier transition in Utah and, by extension, places like Colorado.
A couple of years ago I began to push east from the Sierra a bit, getting into the western portion of the basin and range country along the California-Nevada border. Here, too, I often found color changing just a bit earlier than in the Sierra. In fact, I have been able to photograph early fall aspen color in this area as early as the third week of September.
This year I decided to visit Great Basin National Park. I figured it would be on the Utah schedule, so I arrived almost a week before the end of September… to find that many groves of trees had not really yet changed! After a day or two of working those trees I decided to strike out and visit other more remote areas of the park, including one gravel road that enters further south. Here I did finally find quite a bit of good color, including both cottonwoods and aspens.
Of course, that leaves me a bit more mystified — it appears that lower elevation trees may change first here? That is the opposite of my experience elsewhere!
So, like you, I continue to learn!
Dan
I’ve been trying for years to figure out the schedule for Great Basin fall color change. It’s funny. As best I can tell, the Whites and central Nevada ranges (e.g. Toiyabes, Toquimas, Monitors) go a good bit earlier than the Sierra, last week of September or even a bit earlier. But eastern Nevada seems to run later, more on Sierra time. I was just out there this weekend, and Great Basin NP had excellent color, but with substantial trees still green. The Schell Creek Range near Ely was stripped up high but still mostly green down low, with only patchy color. Someday, I need to get some data points for further north in the Rubies, Jarbidge, Santa Rosas….. the project continues!