Tag Archives: frost

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

Frost-Rimmed Oak Leaves, Autumn

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Frost-Rimmed Oak Leaves, Autumn - A very cold autumn morning brings a touch of frost to late-fall oak leaves in Yosemite Valley
A very cold autumn morning brings a touch of frost to late-fall oak leaves in Yosemite Valley

Frost-Rimmed Oak Leaves, Autumn. Yosemite Valley, California. November 13, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A very cold autumn morning brings a touch of frost to late-fall oak leaves in Yosemite Valley

Earlier this week I had (just barely) enough time for a very quick one-day up-and-back visit to Yosemite Valley. Such a visit, entailing a four-hour drive each way, and beginning with a 3:30 a.m. alarm going off, is not completely fun in all imaginable ways… but I won’t complain in front of people who might regard a visit to this valley as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I’m fortunate to live where I’m able to get to such a place and back in a day. The reason for the quick visit was that I had not made my annual “autumn leaves” visit to the Valley. In a typical year I do that right around the first of November (though I often think of it as a Halloween trip!) when the maple, oak, and dogwood leaves can be very colorful. I thought that I had missed the show this year, but over the weekend I heard from friends that there were still leaves in The Valley, so I figured that I would try to get up there for a quick visit.

Having gone there for decades, I no longer go straight for the usual iconic subjects – though I will photograph them when the conditions are extraordinary. Instead, I often end up poking around in odd corners, looking for things that are smaller and less easily seen, but which I associate with The Valley just as much as, say, Half Dome or El Capitan or Yosemite Falls. So, odd as it may seem, when I made my first stop of the day at El Capitan Meadow, with its iconic views of Sentinel Rocks and El Capitan on opposite sides of The Valley… I spent the first 15 minutes with my lens pointed down into a small patch of the Merced River where there were some interesting reflections, and then I wandered off along the river bank in a few inches of snow to photograph close-up views of the wonderful oak leaves rimmed with morning frost. It occurred to me later that some might think it is a bit odd to drive so far to photograph such things!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Black Aspen Leaves, Frost

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Black Aspen Leaves, Frost
“Black Aspen Leaves, Frost” — Blackened aspen leaves in frost following an early fall snowfall, eastern Sierra Nevada.

This is a photograph from last year’s (2011) aspen color season in the eastern Sierra Nevada range of California. It was a bit on an unusual season, though in the end it turned out to be one that provided quite a lot of aspen beauty of various sorts. Because that autumn followed the second of two winters with greater-than-normal precipitation in the Sierra, there was a lot of lush and healthy plant growth of all sorts, and even as the end of the summer season arrived there was a lot of greenery about. Then, just as the color season started near the beginning of October, a series of three winter-like storms traversed the range and dropped a foot or more of early season snow. While some snow isn’t unusual at this time of year, a sequence of three storms and that amount of snowfall are unusual. All of the trans-Sierra passes closed for several days.

I came across Tioga Pass on the day that it reopened, and then headed south to the prime aspen-hunting grounds above Bishop, California. The next morning I decided to head up to the North Lake area, and I found the gravel road still snow-covered. I drove on up carefully, and it appeared that I might have been among the very first to try the road after the snow. Needless to say, the storms had a big effect on the aspen leaves! Many of the “ripest” and most colorful leaves had fallen, leaving the trees a bit more bare than usual at this time. And, perhaps due to the cold, rather than turning red and orange and golden-yellow, quite a few leaves went straight to black. Now I’m as attracted to the wildly colorful aspen leaves as anyone, but I’m also intrigued by somewhat unusual conditions, so I found some of the blackened leaves to be interesting, too. In the early hours I found this cluster, no doubt blown down and piled together during the storm, sitting on top of the snow bank and covered with crystalline frost from the previous night.

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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

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Spring Flood, Tuolumne River

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Spring Flood, Tuolumne River - The Tuolumne River floods during the spring runoff, Yosemite National Park.
The Tuolumne River floods during the spring runoff, Yosemite National Park.

Spring Flood, Tuolumne River. Yosemite National Park, California. January 19, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Tuolumne River floods during the spring runoff, Yosemite National Park.

The 2010-11 winter brought above average or record snowfall to the Sierra Nevada, and the Tioga Pass Road through Yosemite National Park opened later than usual. Many of us who were feeling the pent-up need to see the high country headed up there as soon as the road opened. I spent a weekend in the Tioga Pass area and got in two days of early season high Sierra photography.

Those who have only seen this area during the more usual summer season in July and August might be very surprised by what it looks like when the road first opens. At and below the nearly 10,000′ elevation of the pass there was still a lot of snow, and lakes were frozen even down at the 8000′ level. Trail hiking, as appealing as it might sound, is quite difficult as you have to cross a lot of snow, cross very fast-moving and cold streams, and negotiate lots of flooded and muddy areas. This spot is a wonderful case in point. A few weeks later you would find people hiking and lounging about it meadow grasses where the water is seen in this photograph. The early season Tuolumne River was so full that it left its banks in many areas, finding new paths through the forests and flooding many meadows which took on more of the appearance of lakes. (Large sections of the main Tuolumne Meadow were also completely submerged at this point.) It is a wonderful time in the Sierra – still with a bit of the feeling of winter, but also with the promise of summer everywhere.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.

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

Fallen Aspen Branch, Snow

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Fallen Aspen Branch, Snow
“Fallen Aspen Branch, Snow” — A small aspen tree branch blown down by an early fall storm rests on snow, North Lake, California.

Time to share aspen photos again! Each fall when the aspens change colors I head to the eastern Sierra to go aspen hunting! I made my first foray of the season this past weekend. I visited a number of the usual places – Bishop Creek, McGee Creek, Rock Creek, and Lee Vining Canyon. I’ve come to think that every aspen color season has a personality, defined by how and when and with what intensity the color appears, along with the related issues of the changing weather.

This year I think (from what I’ve heard) that the higher elevation trees were just changing colors about a week ago… before a strong early season storm came across the Sierra, dropping temperatures and quite a bit of snow. Over the weekend I saw up to about one foot of snow in places, which is an unusual amount for so early in the season. The aspen color was not exactly astonishing, and I think that the weather may be at least partially to blame. It seems that many of the mature colorful leaves were knocked down by the storm, and others that might now be colorful instead turned black and brown. While there was some interesting color, in many places I saw trees with leaves missing or trees that were almost fully still green.

The good news to take away from this is that since the lower elevation trees are still very green, there should be some fine aspen color very soon.

But I’ve often thought that a single leaf can be enough to make a photograph, and sometimes the single leaf can make a more effective image than a huge, colorful grove spanning many acres. So when I find that the color isn’t what I expected, one response is simply to look harder. As I walked along the road that passes North Lake, many of the subjects that I might have expected to photograph were nowhere to be seen. There were not large, spectacularly colorful trees. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground. So I looked harder… and one of the subjects I noticed was this single, small branch full of intensely colorful leaves lying on the snow.

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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


All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.