An Alpine Bowl

An Alpine Bowl
Rock-filled meadows rise past the tree line towards the rugged terrain of the alpine zone, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

An Alpine Bowl. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Rock-filled meadows rise past the tree line towards the rugged terrain of the alpine zone, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

This particular corner of the Sierra Nevada backcountry landscape became a bit of an obsession for me during out August backcountry photography foray. We camped nearby for a week, and every day we went out to explore and photograph portions of the surrounding alpine landscape. Our base camp was not far below the high country of open meadows and talus, which is my favorite kind of Sierra landscape.

With that in mind, it should probably be no surprise that I walked up into the area in this photograph several times. Access was quite close — a few hundred yards above our camp, after crossing a creek, I was in the lower reaches of the sub-alpine meadow, and from there it was a pleasant amble across the meadows, occasionally through some trees, and on up to the treelike and beyond. High in this bowl I found what I expected — a shallow lake replenished by snowmelt water coming down from high above.


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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