Autumn Haze. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 10, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Autumn haze obscures distant ridges and peaks above an eastern Sierra Nevada valley full of fall color
On the final day of this brief visit to the eastern Sierra in search of aspen color and other fall subjects, we had only a few opportunities for photography. Other responsibilities required us to get back to the San Francisco Bay Area by mid-afternoon, so we were up very early and on the road out of Bishop before 7:00 AM. We passed through Round Valley before sunrise, and I wished I could have delayed for perhaps another half hour. We continued north, and I thought about each of the places that I passed that we didn’t have time to visit — various canyons along the west side of highway and some areas to the east in the high desert terrain. As we approached Lee Vining we decided that we would head further north and cross the crest at Sonora Pass.
As we continued, we realized that we might have enough time to make a brief stop or two… but that we had to limit this. So we passed a few other areas where we might otherwise have stopped. We passed through Bridgeport and on to the turnoff toward Sonora Pass. Part way up the pass we made our first real photographic stop of the day. (It turned out to be our one real stop for this purpose.) Looking back down from partway up the steep ascent from the valley, we could look over the tops of close aspens, across the meadow beyond, and finally to tall peaks obscured by a combination of typical autumn haze mixed in with a bit of the wildfire smoke the was afflicting much of California.
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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