Tag Archives: canyon

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Hikers, Titus Canyon

November 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hikers in Titus Canyon, Death Valley National Park.

There are essentially two ways to get to this portion of Titus Canyon in Death Valley National Park – you can either do a very long drive from near Beatty on gravel roads or you can walk a short distance up from the base of the canyon along the eastern side of Death Valley itself. I’ve done both. The road is quite an experience – in any other park it would probably be regarded as a very special thing, especially the last portion above Death Valley where it twists and turns down a slot canyon that is in places barely wide enough to a vehicle yet so tall that it can be hard to see the tops of the canyon walls. (It is not exactly a bad road, but it isn’t trivial either. There are some very exposed sections where it crosses the mountain ridge and descends past Leadville. Although there are reports of people using lesser vehicles, take seriously the recommendations for reasonably high ground clearance and some from of all-wheel drive.)

However, on this visit I simply parked my car at the base of the canyon, shouldered my camera equipment, and walked up the canyon a ways. There is, of course, much that you probably won’t see if you enter the canyon this way, largely because the road is so long that you won’t likely cover much of it on foot. However, I think that you can more clearly sense the scale of the lower slot canyon when traveling of foot. I included two hikers who happened by to give a sense of that scale to the landscape.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Trees and Granite Cliffs

November 10, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Trees ascend rocky slopes to the base of steep granite cliffs, Tuolumne River Canyon, Yosemite National Park.

There are still a few more photographs to be found among those I made during my weeklong mid-September backpack into the Yosemite back-country. I spent several days photographing in the Glen Aulin area and this is one more of the photographs from that area. In the evening the sun sets down canyon from Glen Aulin, and we had travelled to a spot where we could see down into the upper reaches of the canyon as the sun set. While I was photographing some closer subjects, I looked up and saw the light from the west back- and side-lighting trees at the upper edge of the forest before it gives way to steep granite cliffs.

One of the great pleasures of this trip was having the opportunity to spend a number of days in each location. We spent three days in this area at the start of the trip and I had the better part of two additional days on the way back to my car. In many cases, I might initially wonder how I could possibly spend that many days shooting one small area within walking distance of my camp. But many days later I had discovered more and more potential subjects… and I almost felt like I was running out of necessary time!

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Dry Wash, Twenty Mule Team Canyon

November 7, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dry wash descends past the barren hills of Twenty Mule Team Canyon in morning shadows, Death Valley National Park.

I made this photograph on an early morning in early April a couple of years ago. I had gone to Death Valley National Park’s Twenty Mule Team Canyon to photograph some folded and eroded patterns in the upper portion of this valley, and a bit after sunrise I noticed a trail heading up a side canyon. I decided to follow it. It started out by ascending the wash shown in the photograph and eventually reached a low saddle along the eroded ridge of between this canyon and the descent to Death Valley itself. When I arrived there, as sometimes happens in Death Valley, I discovered an old vehicle track heading down into the canyon on the other side.

Since I had some other plans for a bit later in the morning, and because I didn’t see anything immediately exciting on the other side of this ridge as the route descended, I instead backtracked into this wash. As my trail crossed the broad area across from this line of hills I looked back toward the main valley and saw this sunlit s-curve in front of the somewhat shaded ridge.

Related: See my extensive posts on Photographing Death Valley

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Mount Humphreys and the Sierra Crest, Dawn

October 30, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Dawn light falls on the snow-dusted summit of Mount Humphreys and the Sierra Crest above Bishop, California.

On this morning I paused along highway 168 on my way to photograph fall aspen color in the Bishop Creek Canyon area to photograph the first light on the Buttermilk Range and along the section of the Sierra crest near Mt. Humphreys and Center Peak. My main reason for stopping here was to photograph the Buttermilks, the rocky hills along the giant “fan” rising from Bishop toward the base of the escarpment of the eastern Sierra. The plan was to find a good vantage point, put a long lens on the camera, and then pick out various features of the range as the edge of the first light hit them.

With that in mind, I was set up here before dawn and standing around in the cold morning air waiting for the light to arrive. Obviously, before the dawn light can get down to the elevation of the Buttermilks it must first hit the peaks of the crest, and who can resist that kind of light? The very first light that just touched the tip of Mount Humphreys, near the right side of the frame, was almost too intense in comparison to the shadowed lower slopes, so I continued to wait until the light, still very saturated with color, illuminated the full upper faces of the crest and began to light up the lower peaks to the east.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: canyon

Hikers, Titus Canyon

Trees and Granite Cliffs

Dry Wash, Twenty Mule Team Canyon

Mount Humphreys and the Sierra Crest, Dawn

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.