Brilliant sunset clouds from dissipating thunderstorms above the Yosemite Sierra crest.
Almost a full year later I recall this sunset very clearly. I had come up Tioga Pass Road to this spot, and as the end-of-day light came on I decided to establish myself here and work whatever photographic opportunities might come up. This is an area of beautiful meadows, and I’ve wandered off across them and into the far forest many times. This time working from closer to the road I saw a huge wave cloud formation floating east of the Sierra Crest, most likely over Mono Lake. At that point the cloud was impressive for size and structure, though it was basically white.
There was obviously a pretty good chance for color in the moments right before and after sunset, so I set up, selected a couple of possible compositions that included the sky, and watched. Gradually color began to come to the clouds, and just as the last bit of direct sunlight struck the two highest peaks the clouds lit up in spectacular fashion.
The Dana Fork of the Tuolumne River curves through subalpine meadows in evening light
Mid-July, at least in a relatively dry year, as was the summer of 2016, can be the time of the most natural loveliness in the High Sierra. Most snow has melted, the creeks and rivers are flowing, the vegetation is green, the days are long, wildflowers are appearing, and the light is beautiful. If it weren’t for mosquitos, the world would be perfect. (This year July will likely look quite different, and I suspect that there will still be patches of snow on the ground and that the water will be much higher.)
Last July I spent a few days in the Tuolumne Meadows area, a place that is comfortable and familiar to me by now. This time I car-camped, staying in the busy Tuolumne Meadows campground, but heading out early and late in the day to find photographic subjects nearby and as far away as Mono Lake. On this evening I found myself along Tioga Pass road late in the day as sunset approached, so I stopped and wandered out into this intimate landscape of the Dana Fork of the Tuolumne, rock-filled meadows, and forest, with the point of Cathedral Peak silhouetted against the sky in the distance.
Translucent atmosphere as the sky clears in the wake of a Death Valley dust storm
This was the tail end of a massive dust storm that was with us in one form or another for an entire day. Very early in the morning we had seen the precursor conditions when we visited a high ridge in the Panamint range before dawn. At that time there was a kind of haze in the atmosphere that I had come to associate with incipient dust storm conditions. By midday the dust was easily seen rising out of the great valleys on either side of the mountains, and before long tendrils of dust were snaking through the air above our position. Returning to Death Vally itself we encountered a wild scene — thick dust everywhere and extremely high winds. We gave up and shut ourselves indoors for a few hours, and then not long before sunset the wind abated a bit, and I ventured outside.
The dust storm was still raging across the valley, but in our location the winds had dropped considerably. But in the interim a weather system had moved overhead, and now it was raining into the dust storm — something I had not encountered here before. I made my way to an elevated location that was above much of the worst of the dust and from which I had wide views across the lower end of the Valley. From there I could see the Cottonwood Mountains to the west, and as the air cleared slightly the light made its way under the clouds and back-lit the dust still floating in the translucent atmosphere.
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.
