Tag Archives: golden

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

Autumn Aspens, Great Basin

October 1, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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.

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

August 19, 2017 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

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.

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

July 4, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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.

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

Aspens, Earth Shadow, Morning

November 29, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

On a cold and clear morning in mid-September earlier this year I left my camp in the Sierra and headed east, past Mono Lake and on out into the mountains east of the Sierra Nevada and east of US 395. I did not have a specific goal in mind, but I thought I would do a bit of early season aspen color reconnaissance in preparation for planned visits to photograph fall color a few weeks later. I gradually worked my way further out from the Sierra, stopping from time to time and poking around the ends of various gravel roads. Finally I found one that looked promising and took it.

I knew that I had previously seen aspens atop ridges in the general area of this road, and I had made a note to come back this way in the fall. I don’t typically expect to see much fall color by mid-September in the Sierra, but I soon found quite a bit of it — a whole mountain top was covered with small trees that were beginning to turn colors almost uniformly. I took a short spur road to an overlook and parked — from here there was an almost unobstructed view of a big section of the Sierra crest. It was cold enough to let me know that autumn wasn’t far away as I waited for the sun, beginning to photograph in that lovely predawn period of warm colors when the earth’s shadow can be seen in the darkened atmosphere just above the horizon.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: golden

Autumn Aspens, Great Basin

Reflected Mountain Slopes

Grove of Slender Aspens, Autumn

Aspens, Earth Shadow, Morning

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