Above Mono Basin. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A long view into and across Mono Basin and Mono Lake in the early morning.
You certainly cannot tell from the photograph, but this was a very cold autumn morning in the region east of the Sierra Nevada crest. We work up at our camp in one of the Eastern Sierra canyons before dawn in temperatures that were around 20 degrees Fahrenheit — cold but not unusual for early October. We headed east, out past Mono Lake and then climbing into nearby mountains. Along the way the thermometer in our vehicle went as low as nine degrees! When you are only a few weeks past the end of summer, that feels very cold!
From this high point on a long ridge overlooking Mono Lake we could see a vast expanse from near to far. Just below us was a bit of conifer forest (and nearby some aspens), but the landscape here is mostly sagebrush country. Far below we looked across the two volcanic islands of this lake to its far shore, and beyond that the hills and mountains climbed here, with the most distant peaks (barely visible in the late-season wildfire haze) well above 10,000 feet.
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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