Cloud Shadows on North Dome. Yosemite National Park, California. May 16, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Cloud shadows cross the face of North Dome in late afternoon light. Mt. Hoffman in the distance. Photographed from Glacier Point.
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Cloud Shadows on North Dome. Yosemite National Park, California. May 16, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Late afternoon cloud shadows race across the top of North Dome with Mount Hoffman beyond and Yosemite Valley below. Photographed from Glacier Point.
Mt. Hoffman is one of the most historic locations in the park. It was from Hoffman’s summit that members of the California Survey Party did much of their early mapping work in the 1800s. Today there is almost a trail to the summit – a steep but not overly difficult route (if you are used to off-trail alpine travel) from May Lake.
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This is all that remained in 2008 of the Jeffrey Pine on Sentinel Dome that was the subject of the famous Ansel Adams photograph,”Jeffrey Pine, Sentinel Dome.” Somewhere I even have my early attempts at trying to do the “Ansel Adams thing” with my black and white film camera when I was much younger, featuring one or more photographs of this very tree, while it was still alive. Trust me, if you are a Sierra Nevada landscape photographer of a certain age, you knew this tree and probably visited it.
I photographed this close-up “portrait” many years after the tree died, while on a quick hike over to the summit of Sentinel Dome along the Glacier Point Road in 2008. Things change slowly in the Sierra, but they do inevitably change. This is now, objectively speaking, another dead snag atop a Yosemite granite dome — however, this snag has achieved a sort of iconic status. Yet, perhaps there will eventually be another, maybe even the younger tree seen in the background beyond the dead stump.
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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email
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Sentinel Dome Hikers Above Yosemite Valley. Yosemite National Park, California. © Copyright 2008 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Two hikers enjoy the panoramic view from Sentinel Dome above Yosemite Valley – Yosemite National Park
On this early season day back on 2008 I drove up the road to Glacier Point, stopping alone the way to make the short lateral hike out to the summit of Sentinel Dome. Sentinel is a classic viewpoint in Yosemite, and was made even more famous by the well-known iconic “Jeffrey Pine” photograph by Ansel Adams, featuring a lone, rugged, wind-bent tree that grew for years on that summit, backed by distant peaks of the high Sierra. (That tree died years ago, though its stump remains and is still picturesque… and a reminder that time passes. Another reminder for me — when I was a child my family visited this dome and that tree while it was still living.)
On this visit I took the newer trail that replaced the old (and environmentally insensitive) trail from a parking lot on the lower reaches of the dome, and arrived on the summit to reacquaint myself with the spot after a long absence. As I photographed on the summit, this young couple hiked to the top and settled in on this rock to take in the spectacular view into the canyon below.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.