Mountains, Alpine Tarn, Dark Clouds. John Muir Wilderness, California. August 28, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dark clouds assemble behind a ridge over a tarn nestled in an alpine meadow

I first visited this area a number of years ago — I think it may have been a dozen years now. I was on a fast and light trip with a buddy, carrying an ultra-light load and sleeping in a bivy sack. We entered this general area and went straight to a lake close to timberline where we made a base camp and went on to further explore the upper reaches of this basin. This return trip was different in many ways, but perhaps most of all in its almost exclusive focus on photography. We stopped at a lower lake and set up a camp, hidden in trees on top of a moraine, and there we would remain for more than a week, wandering out each day to look for photographic subjects. I soon discovered that I had missed a true gem on that earlier visit.

On the first full day of this recent trip we left our campsite and, in small groups, ascended the rocky moraine through small trees to reach a little use trail. We followed that upwards, still in forest. But then there were breaks in the forest cover and suddenly a large meadow covered the rounded hills at the top of an old glacially sculpted where a lake had likely once filled a shallow valley. (A small tarn is all that remains today.) Whatever your fantasy of a mountain meadow might be, the first sight of this scene exceeded it. The grasses were still green, even though it was near the end of August. Wildflowers in a rainbow of colors were sprinkled throughout the meadow. Peaks rose on three sides, and on the fourth side there was a deep valley with even higher peaks beyond. I returned to this spot many times — probably once a day for the next week — and I made this photograph a few days later, in the early evening as low angle light slanted across the meadow and distant peaks and dark thunder clouds began to gather in the further distance.

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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