Tag Archives: golden

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspens, Early Evening

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Aspens, Early Evening
Early evening light slants across eastern Sierra Nevada foothills and aspen groves beneath snow-covered peaks

Aspens, Early Evening. October 4, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early evening light slants across eastern Sierra Nevada foothills and aspen groves beneath snow-covered peaks

I made my first Sierra Nevada autumn aspen trip earlier this week. (This wasn’t my first aspen hunt of the season, though — a week ago I went into Eastern Nevada to look for them, too.) I just had a couple of days this time, though I’ll be back there again before too long. I did a rather high-mileage trip for such a short visit. On Tuesday I traveled east from the Bay Area to cross the crest at Carson Pass. I headed south over Monitor Pass to get to US 395, and then I headed south to find a campsite in Bishop Canyon. It was an “interesting” weather day — I drove through light snow flurries on the upper portion of US 395, though it cleared once I got south of Mammoth Lakes. Aspen conditions? In short, color is changing in many places, though had only peaked in a very few, so there is plenty of color left to come.

People often ask, “Where is the best place to find aspen color?” (You may have heard — I wrote a book on the subject!) I think that the best answer is perhaps not to name one or another place but to consider how aspen color evolves each fall and the many potential places to look for it. A short answer is that you can head over just about any trans-Sierra pass from highway 80 south and keep your eyes peeled! In general, things tend to move from north to south and from high to low, so keep that in mind as you look. But right now, if you cross any of these passes and take a cruise up and down US 395, all you really need to do is keep your eyes open and be prepared to do a bit of investigating… and you are almost certain to be rewarded.

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: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Nevada

Autumn Aspens, Great Basin

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Autumn Aspens, Great Basin
Autumn aspen trees drop their leaves, Great Basin National Park

Autumn Aspens, Great Basin. Great Basin National Park, Nevada. September 27, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn aspen trees drop their leaves, Great Basin National Park

I began this year’s Great Fall Color Chase in a different location — not the Eastern Sierra Nevada, but instead about as far east as one can go in Nevada, at the Great Basin National Park. Several factors led me to make this trip — some specifically fall color related, and others that don’t connect to that activity. Over the past few years I have noticed a few things about Sierra Nevada fall color season. The crowds have been increasing, to the point that they can sometimes be a bit too much. But quieter and less crowded places are still available if you look around a bit. And sometimes looking a bit beyond the confines of the Sierra turns up some interesting color, perhaps in places you might not expect. The latter realization has pushed me gradually further east of the Sierra itself… and what could be a more natural extension of that process than going to the eastern boundary of Nevada?

But fall color was only part of my reason for making the long trip to Great Basin National Park. I know a bit about the basin and range country, but my direct experience with it is limited — and this park (and the long drive across many basins and ranges to get there!) offered the chance to confront this new, to me, landscape. I arrived a few days before the end of September, thinking that the somewhat earlier color change that I’ve seen in next-door Utah might be mirrored in Nevada. This turned out to be partially true — there was already aspen and cottonwood and other types of color, but it wasn’t quite at peak just yet. But I learned a lot on this trip, about where to look for the color (including one canyon I discovered just a bit too late) and when to find it. I made this photograph of trees growing in a large valley below the summit ridge that holds Wheeler Peak, the 13,000+ footer that is the second-tallest peak in Nevada.

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: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Reflected Mountain Slopes

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Reflected Mountain Slopes
Golden hour light on the lower slopes of a high Sierra peak is reflected by the surface of a lake

Reflected Mountain Slopes. Hoover Wilderness Area, California. August 6, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Golden hour light on the lower slopes of a high Sierra peak is reflected by the surface of a lake

On this evening our camp was at a large subalpine lake, improbably located directly on the summit of the ridge of the Sierra, albeit in a relatively low spot that was under 10,000′ of elevation. When I write “on the summit,” I mean it — this lake has two outlets, with one draining to the west into Yosemite National Park, and the other draining to the east, ultimately sending the water into Nevada.

It was a joy this year to once again to see the Sierra with snow on the peaks and filling the gullies. It was so nice that I even managed to avoid resenting the places where the trail was slightly obliterated by remaining patches of snow! As the evening arrived I found a high spot with a good view of the lake and surrounding mountains and made this photograph as the shadows of the last light of the day began to creep up the sides of this peak, with golden light reflecting off the surface of the lake.

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: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Grove of Slender Aspens, Autumn

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Grove of Slender Aspens, Autumn
An eastern Sierra grove of slender aspens with a hint of fall color remaining

Grove of Slender Aspens, Autumn. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 10, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An eastern Sierra grove of slender aspens with a hint of fall color remaining

There are interesting subtleties to the autumn transition of aspen color in the eastern Sierra. Unlike forests in some other areas, where the trees are more similar across wide areas, and thus tend to change colors at the same time, in the Sierra the color change has many variations of region, climate, moisture, and elevation. It is quite possible to arrive at a grove to find that almost all of the leaves have fallen… only to visit another grove not too far away where the color change is still getting underway.

This is a somewhat unusual little grove. The trees are very slender and crowded closely tighter. They are also, generally, smaller than those in the more-or-less typical Sierra aspen grove, where trees may be larger but also tend to be bent and even misshapen. These slender trees stand tall and straight, and at the time I made the photograph they had lost nearly all of their leaves, leaving a somewhat ghostly forest of bare trunks.

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 | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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