Tag Archives: california

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Spring Meadow, Clearing Clouds

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Spring Meadow, Clearing Clouds
Clouds and mist clear above Tuolumne Meadows, still brown and full of spring run-off

Spring Meadow, Clearing Clouds. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Clouds and mist clear above Tuolumne Meadows, still brown and full of spring run-off

Every spring (or early summer in very wet years) I try to head up to Tioga Pass Road, Tuolumne Meadows, and Tioga Pass on the day that this trans-Sierra highway reopens for the season or as soon thereafter as possible. The road opens as early as late April and as late as early July, depending on various factors but mostly on the amount of snow that fell over the winter. In heavy snowfall years, especially when winter conditions last later, even in July there can still be a lot of snow on the ground and there is water everywhere. Two years ago there was still a lot of snow, waterfalls were everywhere, creeks were overflowing, and in places the water flowed right across the roadway.

This was not a very wet winter. Early in the season it looked promising, but then there was an extended warm and dry spell early in 2018. Fortunately there was a second surprise — a wetter and colder end to the winter season. When all was said and done, while the winter wasn’t complete bust it was well below normal. Given those conditions I was surprised when the road didn’t open until the second half of May. I made it up there a few days after the opening and spent a day along the route, enjoying the transitional return to the warm season, watching ephemeral signs of the snow melt, and making a few photographs. Meadows that are lush and green as I write this post were still brown when I visited. It takes a while for the snow to melt, the water to collect, and the grasses to come back to life. This photograph looks across Tuolumne Meadows, across which the Tuolumne River meanders, toward more distant ridge and domes blanketed by clearing mist and clouds.

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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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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Rocky Shoreline And Spray

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Rocky Shoreline And Spray
Spray from surf mutes a rocky Northern California shoreline scene

Rocky Shoreline And Spray. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Spray from surf mutes a rocky Northern California shoreline scene

This rocky and exposed beach, open to the Northern California Pacific Ocean, first caught my attention as I headed north on the first day of my visit to redwood country. I had made the long drive up the Central Valley, the long traverse out to the coast at Eureka/Arcata, and then traveled further north to the redwoods on my way to my final destination in Crescent City. Perhaps unexpectedly, in many spots along this coastline you don’t actually see the ocean or the shoreline itself — the route tends to be inland a ways and/or travel through forests. So when the road came around a bend near sunset and arrived at this spot, where the waves are literally only feet from the edge of the road, it made quite an impression. I stopped briefly but did not see a photograph at that time, and I travelled on.

Several days later, as I departed the Redwood National and State Parks area (and after making a final stop at Prairie Creek State Park), I again came down a hill to this beach. I stopped again, but this time the conditions were quite different. There was active surf coming onshore, and the waves had stirred up a thin, low fog that hugged the coast. Overhead higher clouds indicated the passage of a weather front. From this spot it was easy to see how littered this coastline is with the boulders and sea stacks that are left behind as the ocean erodes the shore.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Redwood National & State Parks

Redwoods Great And Small

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Redwoods Great And Small
Dense Northern California redwood forest containing both old-growth and young trees

Redwoods Great And Small. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dense Northern California redwood forest containing both old-growth and young trees

I’ve lived on the fringes of California’s coastal redwoods ever since my family moved to the state when I was four-years-old. For years we did weekend trips to places like Big Basin Redwoods State Park, often hiking through the trees and beyond. So I have always been familiar with these extraordinarily tall trees and with the special forests they inhabit. However, it wasn’t until much later that I understood how truly rare the original old-growth forests are. I recently read that only 5% of the original forest was left mostly untouched — meaning that 95% of the trees (19 out of 20!) were cut down during a fairly short period, mostly in the 20th century. This was an astounding example of where greed can push humankind, and we can reasonably imagine that without intervention all of the old-growth forests would have been lost forever. If that greed had gotten its way, you would have to reimagine scenes like this one with only the slender trees on the right, because certain parties would have cut up every accessible tree like the one on the left.

Today it seems bizarre to recall the strong objections to saving these remnants back when the Redwood National Park was first proposed. Even conserving parts of the last 5% of the ancient forests seemed to be a bridge to far for interests blinded by their long-term investments in a nearly depleted natural resource, and they fought bitterly against that parks. There are several lessons in this. This was not isolated resistance to conservation — it has been the pattern with the creation of essentially all of our great American parks and other efforts to protect wilderness and natural areas. There are [i]always[/i] a few very loud voices shrieking that the protection of a few last remnants of America’s great landscape will ruin their economy. (Witness the Utah minority today working to undo national monuments.) However, now that our park system is well over a century old, it is plainly obvious that virtually every single protected area is regarded as a treasure and virtually no sane person would argue that we did the wrong thing by protecting them.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Redwood National & State Parks

Alder Thicket And Stream

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Alder Thicket And Stream
A small stream flows through the dense foliage of an alder thicket in Northern California redwood country

Alder Thicket And Stream. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small stream flows through the dense foliage of an alder thicket in Northern California redwood country

It was my first evening in redwood country, and I had only a few hours and little idea where to start, so I headed to Redwood National Park (part of the larger “State and National Parks” complex) and turned up a road toward a well-known grove of redwoods. I only stopped there briefly, deciding instead to explore further up the road even though I really had almost no idea what I would find up there. I finally broke out of the redwood forest at a couple of clearings from which I was able to get a broader overview of the surroundings. (It did occur to me that the larger one was likely there only because redwoods had been cleared from it many years ago.)

I now had a bit of a schedule to follow, as I hoped to find a place to photograph the last light of the day and then continue on to my lodgings in Crescent City. However, I often find it hard to resist a detour, especially when it looks like it might go somewhere interesting, so I turned off onto a side road that quickly dead-ended at the bottom of a canyon where a small creek flowed and the foliage grew very thickly. This was not actually a redwood forest location — at least not in this immediate spot — but the more open light among the alder trees supported lush undergrowth around this little creek.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.