Mountain Lake, First Light. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
First light touches the top of a ridge under deep blue sky reflected in the surface of a wilderness lake, Yosemite.
This Yosemite backcountry lake fall just short of having one of my favorite mountain lake features — having more than one outlet stream. I know of a few, including one I have visited that drains on both sides of the Sierra crest. This one isn’t on the crest, instead sitting in a shallow bowl near the upper edge of the sides of a great canyon, surrounded by gently rocky terrain and forest. The actual outlet stream (directly left of my camera position) is far less dramatic than the “almost-an-infinity-pool” outlet seen here.
Beyond the low ridge with the central tree in this photograph lies one of the great river canyons of the western Sierra Nevada. Like all of them, it eventually drains toward the Great Central Valley and then to the Pacific via San Francisco Bay. (Well, except for the not insignificant portions of the flow that are diverted these days.) Because this location is on the edge of that canyon and faces to the west, there are no taller peaks or ridges between it and the Valley and the Coast Range. I photographed this scene as the first sun was beginning to strike the ridge along that far side and early enough that the water was completely still.
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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
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