Tag Archives: national

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Cathedral Range, Meadows, Evening

June 5, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cathedral range and early evening in the Yosemite High Sierra.

For me, this is a quintessential Sierra Nevada scene, and memories such places and sensations go back almost to my first knowledge of the range. One touchstone was many years ago when my father took me up to Tuolumne Meadows (if my hazy memory is accurate) and we passed through such country. I have a very particular memory of stopping at a waterfall alongside the road, where I looked up the stream above that cascade and wondered, without quite understanding what I was asking, what might lie above and beyond my field of vision. Perhaps at about this time I discovered some of my father’s books, including one that was (again, if memory is correct) about a passage along the backcountry spine of the range. The photograph I remember most from that book, a photograph that is still one of my mental models for seeing these mountains, featured a deeply grooved trail heading across a high country meadow toward a distant ridge. Some things never change!

This spot is one that I know well — and it is also easily accessible. But it could be any of thousands of places where water runs between meadow banks and past forests with rocky peaks in the distance, the sum of which draw me back to these mountains every year. There is still a lot of snow on the ground in this and similar places right now, and the water is running much higher. But in a month or two this brief period of abundant green will come to the high country, and you’ll find me there again.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Dana Fork, Evening

June 2, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Dana Fork of the Tuolumne River curves through subalpine meadows in evening light

Mid-July, at least in a relatively dry year, as was the summer of 2016, can be the time of the most natural loveliness in the High Sierra. Most snow has melted, the creeks and rivers are flowing, the vegetation is green, the days are long, wildflowers are appearing, and the light is beautiful. If it weren’t for mosquitos, the world would be perfect. (This year July will likely look quite different, and I suspect that there will still be patches of snow on the ground and that the water will be much higher.)

Last July I spent a few days in the Tuolumne Meadows area, a place that is comfortable and familiar to me by now. This time I car-camped, staying in the busy Tuolumne Meadows campground, but heading out early and late in the day to find photographic subjects nearby and as far away as Mono Lake. On this evening I found myself along Tioga Pass road late in the day as sunset approached, so I stopped and wandered out into this intimate landscape of the Dana Fork of the Tuolumne, rock-filled meadows, and forest, with the point of Cathedral Peak silhouetted against the sky in the distance.

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

Clearing Dust Storm, Evening

June 1, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Translucent atmosphere as the sky clears in the wake of a Death Valley dust storm

This was the tail end of a massive dust storm that was with us in one form or another for an entire day. Very early in the morning we had seen the precursor conditions when we visited a high ridge in the Panamint range before dawn. At that time there was a kind of haze in the atmosphere that I had come to associate with incipient dust storm conditions. By midday the dust was easily seen rising out of the great valleys on either side of the mountains, and before long tendrils of dust were snaking through the air above our position. Returning to Death Vally itself we encountered a wild scene — thick dust everywhere and extremely high winds. We gave up and shut ourselves indoors for a few hours, and then not long before sunset the wind abated a bit, and I ventured outside.

The dust storm was still raging across the valley, but in our location the winds had dropped considerably. But in the interim a weather system had moved overhead, and now it was raining into the dust storm — something I had not encountered here before. I made my way to an elevated location that was above much of the worst of the dust and from which I had wide views across the lower end of the Valley. From there I could see the Cottonwood Mountains to the west, and as the air cleared slightly the light made its way under the clouds and back-lit the dust still floating in the translucent atmosphere.

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

Dunes, Mountains, Dust Storm, Rain

May 27, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening dust storm and rain in the evening in Death Valley

During the nearly two decades since my first visit to Death Valley I have seen my share of exceptions conditions there — a wildflower “bloom of the century,” snow on more than one occasion, unreal golden hour color, wild animals of various sorts. Once we even photographed wildflowers in a snow storm… in Death Valley. But this day was one of the wildest I have experienced, and the evening was like nothing I had seen or even imagined before. Much earlier in the day we photographed high in the Panamint Mountains, and by the middle of the day we could tell that a big dust storm was brewing. The atmosphere was opaque and glowing, and before long tendrils of blowing dust were passing high above the mountains. By the time we descended back into Death Valley a full-blown storm was underway. I had never seen as much dust or experienced winds quite so strong. In places this was no mere dust storm — it was a sand storm and even a pebble storm on at least one occasion. We finally gave up and headed to Stovepipe Wells and shut ourselves in our room as huge winds howled around the building and sand came into our room through every crack in the door or windows.

Hours later the wind began to subside and a bit of light appeared, so I decided to head out and see what I could find. I took a little-used gravel road up to a high spot overlooking a section of the Valley and waited to see what would happen. The dust storm was stilling in progress, but occasional breaks in the wind allowed me to make some photographs – only to be interrupted by huge gusts and more blowing dust. As the dust storm began to thin a bit it became apparent that there were storm clouds above the Valley, too, and — I’m not making this up! — as golden hour light began to arrive I watched thunder showers begin to drop sheets of rain onto the mountains above the still-raging dust clouds blowing along the Valley floor. “Apocalyptic” was the word that came to mind when I tried to describe what I was seeing. We respond to landscapes in many ways — they can be pretty, beautiful (not the same thing!), quiet, peaceful, static, dynamic, and more. But this landscape and these conditions provoked a powerful mixture of wonder and amazement and a kind of fear in the face of a landscape full of forces that made me feel very small.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: national

Cathedral Range, Meadows, Evening

Dana Fork, Evening

Clearing Dust Storm, Evening

Dunes, Mountains, Dust Storm, Rain

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