Tag Archives: mountains

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Flower-Covered Hills

April 17, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Spring wildflowers in the Temblor Range, California

I made several photographs of this little valley, with its large number of small receding ridges, covered with flowers and separated by small gullies. We had gone out searching for wildflower prospects in the evening. We drove up into the hills on a one-lane gravel road and eventually found ourselves at a dead-end where the road was closed. We got out, loaded up packs with camera equipment, and continued on up into the Temblor Hills foothills. We left the trail, crossed gully, found a route along and ascending ridge, and before long we were high enough to gain a panoramic view of the Carrizo Plains, and we began to encounter more and more flowers.

After we arrived at the highest point on our hike, which was still far below the summit of these mountains, we set about making photographs. We started on the broad summit of a nearby hill, and from there we could look across a small valley toward these hills, where a series of small ridges ascended toward the evening light. Although there were probably a bit early for the true peak of wildflower color in this spot, there were still thick beds of yellow flowers almost everywhere.

Note: This scene is very similar to that in a photograph I shared just a few days ago. As sometimes happens — especially with my idiosyncratic workflow! — I sometimes end up thinking that my second choice pleases me more than my first.

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

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Rock-Covered Hill, Desert Haze

April 16, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small hill covered with rocks, the salt flats, and distant mountains, Death Valley National Park

I distinctly recall my somewhat unusual first view of Death Valley. It was perhaps about twenty years ago. My oldest son was in a school “hiking and biking” club, and their annual “Big Trip” was to be an adventure in Death Valley involving hiking, backpacking, and more. Most of the group traveled to the park on a small bus, though I joined a group of parent chaperones and the club adviser/teacher in an old Chevy Suburban, highly modified and loaded down with backpacks and other gear for more than thirty people. We drove all day and entered the park after sunset. Because it was late we stopped at the first available camp ground, the Emigrant campground along highway 190 partway down the route below Towne Pass. We set up camp in complete darkness, unaware of our surroundings, in a landscape that I had never before seen.

Early in the morning, perhaps shortly after dawn, I crawled out of my tent and in this light saw the immense light-filled space of this great Valley for the first time, a view that extended down the gigantic fan on which we were camped, the distant valley floor thousands of feet below, and the rugged mountains on the far side of the valley. I had never seen a raw landscape like this before, with no visible plant life and its geology laid bare — a place of rock, sand, haze, juxtaposed shapes, textures, often-subtle colors, and huge distances. There is, I think, a bit of that in this photograph, which includes a dark, rocky hill that I have looked at many times, its ridge sloping the opposite direction from the distant dark hills across the valley, barely visible through the opaque atmosphere.

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Temblor Range Wildflowers

April 14, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Temblor Range slopes covered with spring wildflowers

In the right locations, for a few weeks in spring following a wet winter, California’s grasslands can produce absolutely stunning wildflower displays. They typically occur near the very end of what I call the “impossibly green season,” when the typically dry and brown grasslands are brilliantly green from winter rains but just about to turn golden-brown once again. There are many places to find these flowers, but the Carrizo Plains can, in good years, produce exceptional colors. This spring, following a winter of record-breaking precipitation, has been one of those years.

I drove though this area on my way to Death Valley, and when I arrived I found hundreds (perhaps thousands?) of Sunday visitors to the flowers. By late afternoon many of these people were leaving, and our small group set out to look for colors along the lower slopes for the Temblor Range. (So named because they formed along the path of the great San Andreas fault.) We picked a one-lane gravel road and followed it up the lower slopes to where it dead-ended, then got out and continued up the into the hills on foot. I made this photograph near the top of our climb, shortly before sunset as the light from the evening sun passed over the flower-covered ridges of this gully at a low angle.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Ghost Towns, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Abandoned Stamp Mill

April 11, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

It seems that every national park or monument has both a natural and a human hisstory, or perhaps a story about the relationship between the two. While the power of natural forces (heat, water, geology, and more) is abundantly obvious in the huge, austere landscape of Death Valley National Park, the human history of the place is rarely far from view. It begins with the evidence of people who lived here long before European-origin settlers came, evidence that can be seen in rock art scattered throughout the park, in the recognition that many settlements (current and now-abandoned) have a very much longer history than we may think, and in the native people who still occupy and identify with this landscape.

Perhaps more obvious is the more recent history of those who came to look for mining success. (There are places in the park where extraction still takes place.) Some examples are obvious to the casual visitor, but the more time you spend in the back-country of the park the more you understand that this particular history is everywhere — though not usually as obvious as this example. This stamp mill, built to crush gold ore, is amazing in multiple ways. Perched at the end of high ridge in very remote location, it was powered in the most unlikely manner… by water piped in from a spring over twenty miles away. The location is stupendous, and it is easy to think that practical issues may not have been the only considerations in choosing the site. From here one can look down thousands of feet to broad alluvial slopes leading towards Death Valley, but one can also look further into the distance and see the snow-covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada.

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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

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: mountains

Flower-Covered Hills

Rock-Covered Hill, Desert Haze

Temblor Range Wildflowers

Abandoned Stamp Mill

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