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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

High Country Aspens

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High Country Aspens
A row of autumn aspens in front of receding conifer forest and rising slopes near Sonora Pass on a Sierra Nevada fall evening

High Country Aspens. Sierra Nevada, California. September 26, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A row of autumn aspens in front of receding conifer forest and rising slopes near Sonora Pass on a Sierra Nevada fall evening

Although I’ve driven across Sonora Pass for years, I feel that I have perhaps neglected its photographic potential, perhaps because it is somewhat out of the way for me on many of my Sierra trips — the major Tahoe area routes are farther north, and my favorite trans-Sierra route further south is Tioga Pass through Yosemite. I have photographs from the base of the pass on the east side, but my collection of photographs from the highest reaches of the pass is very  small. With this in mind, I decided to return from this trip to the eastern Sierra by way of this pass, and I timed the traverse for the late afternoon when I thought the light might be idea.

Although this pass is not quite as high as Tioga Pass, it has a much more alpine feeling. The road is very steep in places and frequently quite narrow as it twists and turns up and down and around trees and boulders. I recall once thinking many years ago that driving this pass is about as close to the feeling of hiking the high country as one can get on a road. There are a lot of aspens along this route, but in many places they are mixed in with the conifer forest, making them a bit more difficult of a photographic subject. Finally, perhaps a couple miles east of the pass, the terrain opened up to high forests and meadows and I found a few beautiful aspen groves standing apart.

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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Locations, Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Sierra Nevada Fall Color

Sierra Fall Color — Late September 2015

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I’ve just returned from my first trip of the season to photograph Sierra Nevada fall color, and I have a few impressions and observations to share.

Autumn Aspens, Eastern Sierra Gully
A “river” of aspen trees in autumn colors snakes its way up an eastern Sierra Nevada gully

Autumn Aspens, Eastern Sierra Gully. Sierra Nevada, California. September 26, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

In a typical year the peak of the Sierra Nevada aspen color generally occurs around the first two to three weeks of October, so I would not usually head up there to photograph the fall color in September. But this is not a typical year. After four years of historic drought conditions in the Sierra, the normal seasonal cycles seem to have been disrupted. With that in mind I felt it might be worthwhile to go a bit early this year, and my visit was rewarded with some excellent early color.

Some Speculation

Every season brings reports that “the color is coming early this year!” Eventually I figured out that this is quite often a matter of folks becoming overly exuberant when they see the first early signs of the color change, and that things tend to play out on roughly the same schedule almost every year. There are variations, but they are most often rather small.

This year I’m prepared to go (a little ways) out on a limb and say that things do seem to be different this time, though I’m a bit cautious about overdoing the extent of the difference. The photograph at the beginning of this article embodies features of the pattern that I believe I am seeing. Notice some trees without any leaves at all, some trees that already have intense color, and some trees that are still quite green.

Here is my sense of what is going on. Note that this is essentially personal speculation and guesswork based on what I see, and that I can’t guarantee that I’m right or that things will play out as I imagine they might. That said, I’m planning my own eastern Sierra aspen hunting around these assumptions until I see evidence to the contrary.  Continue reading Sierra Fall Color — Late September 2015 →