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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Lake and Rocky Peninsula

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Lake and Rocky Peninsula
Lake and Rocky Peninsula

Lake and Rocky Peninsula. Kings Canyon National Park, California. September 12, 2013. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Smooth water behind a small rocky peninsula reflects clouds above a high Sierra back-country lake, Kings Canyon National Park

We stopped at this small lake along the route to and from our destination during our September 2013 nine-day photographic excursion into the high Sierra back-country of Kings Canyon National Park. Between the trailhead and the 11,000′ basin where we camped for nearly a week, there was a 15+ mile hike, two near-12,000′ passes, and a final climb of well over a thousand feet – too far for our party to travel in a single day. So we ended up making a stop here on the inbound and outbound trips. This is a view a few steps away from our campsite near the outlet stream.

My previous visit to this lake had been several decades earlier, back on my very first solo Sierra Nevada backpacking trip. That is a story worth its own lengthy post at some point, but the most striking point may be that I decided that my very first solo trip would be two weeks long! Given that solo backpacking may strike some as a stretch in several ways, a shorter first trip might seem more sensible – but in retrospect I’m glad that I went out for so long. After a few initial days of dealing with the expected “issues” of solo backcountry travel, I got past those concerns and have rarely felt as connected to the natural world as I did during the second half of that trip. At about that point I stopped at this lake on the walk between Bubbs Creek and Rae Lakes, and I recall the next day’s climb to the Pass, where I sat for a long time, in no hurry to leave or get to any place in particular.

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.

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

Steelhead Lake, Shoreline

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Steelhead Lake, Shoreline - The curving shoreline of Steelhead Lake, photographed in early evening light.
The curving shoreline of Steelhead Lake, photographed in early evening light.

Steelhead Lake, Shoreline. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. September 15, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The curving shoreline of Steelhead Lake, photographed in early evening light.

This is a fairly simple shot, and I think it represents a sort of scene that many Sierra Nevada back-country travelers know well. Steelhead Lake sits high on a bench up in the McGee Creek drainage, with a very tall ridge running to the east (and blocking early morning light) and a deep canyon to the west and northwest, with views toward the Sierra crest beyond. Unusual for an east-side location, there is much better light in the evening than in the morning. (More typically, east-side high country areas are open to the east and the morning light, and the evening light is blocked by the Sierra crest.) Most of the shoreline of the lake is forested, with the exception of a section at the upper end that is covered by the base of a talus field spilling down from the higher ridges.

We camped on what almost amounted to a peninsula, at least when viewed from the direction from which the trail arrives at the lake. Our spot on the peninsula was high enough to command a view of most of the moderate sized lake, and especially back across this little cover below our position. Late in the day as the setting sun approached the crest of the Sierra out of the frame to the left, low angle light slanted across the valley below and onto the low ridge along the edge of the lake, illuminating the atmospheric haze and back-lighting the trees along the shoreline.

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

Steelhead Lake, Morning

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Steelhead Lake, Morning - Morning light on shoreline trees at Shoreline Lake.
Morning light on shoreline trees at Shoreline Lake.

Steelhead Lake, Morning. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. September 15, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on shoreline trees at Shoreline Lake.

This photograph comes from my late-season three-day backpack trip up into McGee Canyon in the eastern Sierra. This has been a very unusual summer in various ways, so it was almost certainly also my only pack trip this season. (This is very unusual for me – I typically spend several weeks to as much as a month on the trail each summer.) I have visited the McGee Creek trailhead on a number of occasions, most often while searching for aspen color, but I had never hiked more than perhaps a quarter mile up the trail into the canyon. The three of us were rather lazy about planning. At various times leading up to the trip we had thought about heading up to the McGee Lake area, possibly crossing McGee Pass on the Sierra crest and various other ideas – but we hadn’t really settled on anything specific by the time we arrived at the trailhead.

More or less while loading up the packs, we decide that Steelhead Lake would be out likely objective. None of us had been there before, and I was pretty much completely unaware of the place or more than the general outline of the day’s hike. I had briefly looked at maps, but not in any detail. I understood that we would follow the main trail straight up the canyon and then follow its curve to the left as we climbed. I also knew that somewhere up there I would find a trail junction to Steelhead Lake and that it didn’t look like the like was very far beyond this junction. (Sometimes I like to intentionally avoid knowing too much about a place in advance, since this allows me to discover it on its own terms when I get there.) The first portion of the hike was much as I imagined, except that I was surprised to find that there were extensive aspen groves and that they were already changing colors. There was one bit of surprise when the junction to Steelhead Lake turned out to be further up the trail than expected. However, the biggest surprise – and not quite the happiest one – was that what looked like a short journey up this side trail to the lake turned out to be a very, very steep climb! In any case, the lake itself turned out to be a pretty little isolated place, being at more or less the end of a spur trail. It sits in a bowl that with steep slopes on two sides and, somewhat surprisingly for an “east side” location, while it gets decent evening light over the crest, it does not get very early morning light at all. I made this photograph shortly after that morning light had finally arrived and backlit some of the lakeside trees near out campsite.

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

Trees and Cliff, Morning

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Trees and Cliff, Morning - Morning light spills over a high ridge to back light trees near Steelhead Lake.
Morning light spills over a high ridge to back light trees near Steelhead Lake.

Trees and Cliff, Morning. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. September 16. 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light spills over a high ridge to back light trees near Steelhead Lake.

This photograph was made from a point perhaps ten feet (or less!) from my bivy sack. We were camped at out-of-the-way Steelhead Lake, up above McGee Canyon and off the main trail to McGee Lakes and McGee Pass. While I had looked up McGee Canyon from the trailhead before – almost every year while photographing aspens, in fact – this was the first time that I had backpacked up this route and had a chance to actually explore the area. We ended up staying at this lake for two nights, providing time to do a bit of exploration and to see certain subjects that I might have missed with a shorter visit.

I had seen and photographed (though in a different way) this little clump of lakeside trees the morning before, but after thinking about them a bit more I felt that I’d like to shoot them again the next morning. The light at this lake is a bit tricky in that there is a very high ridge to the south and east that blocks the light until quite late in the morning. No morning golden hour shots at this lake! The ridge holds two of the four “railroad baron” peaks that surround Pioneer Basin – Crocker and Stanford. (The other two are Hopkins and Huntington.) A few years ago I had investigated Pioneer Basin on a separate trip and had stood on top of this very ridge and looked down towards this year’s camp. In any case, I had an idea to shoot the trees against backlight, and almost as soon as the sun appeared above this ridge I went to work. I had to shoot essentially straight into the sun in order to get the glowing atmosphere in the canyon beyond the first ridge, and even with a long focal length I was barely able to keep my hand out of the frame as I shaded to front of the lens.

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.