Tag Archives: panamint

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

Before The Dust Storm

May 22, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Just after dawn, the precursors of a day of Death Valley dust storms

I’ve been through a number of desert dust storms in and around Death Valley National Park — ranging from minor “dust blowing through the campsite” events to “damaging to my vehicle” events. (The latter was some years back as I left the park and headed out to highway 395 and, as I later found out, drove through record-breaking wind and driving dust and sand, to the permanent distress of my windshield.) It is fair to say that my feelings about such conditions are mixed. Frankly, they are very unpleasant — the dust gets into everything, from clothes to eyes to camera gear, and it is almost impossible to do much of anything if you are inside a really bad storm. In fact, near the end of the day on which I made this photograph we simply had to hunker down indoors for several hours and wait for it to stop. But there can be a kind of terrible beauty in these events as well, and if you are cautious you can photograph them.

I recall a day many years ago when I started to make sense of the antecedent conditions that lead to such storms. It was the final day of a Death Valley visit and I was down along the southeast part of the main valley, when I noticed a kind of fuzzy glow in the atmosphere. I made a few photographs and headed north to leave the park, and within an hour or so I was engulfed in a huge cloud of dust. On the day I made this photograph we went to a high overlook along the top of a mountain range to photograph dawn light. This time I recognized that strange, milky atmosphere, seen along and above the Black Mountains in the distance in the photograph. The morning was, indeed, quite beautiful. But it was only hours later that we began to see dust above us — even though we were thousands of feet up in the mountains — as a giant storm developed, and by the time we returned to the bottom of Death Valley in the mid-afternoon one of the biggest dust storms I have seen enveloped the area.

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

Panamint Valley and Mountains

May 13, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Looking into Panamint Valley and toward the Panamint Mountain Range

When most people think of Death Valley they probably think of incredibly hot desert conditions. Those conditions are real, and are among the reasons that I do not visit the place during the warmer times of the year. But the conditions are quite a bit more varied than that reputation would suggest. I have been snowed on in Death Valley — on one memorable occasion photographic desert wildflowers in a snow storm! — and I have encountered temperatures ranging from over 100 degrees to below freezing. The variations are related to seasons (there are some very cold places here in the winter!) and to elevation, which ranges from below sea level to over 11,000′.

This photograph captures a range of those conditions in one image. It was a pleasantly warm, though cloudy, day as I left the park. The winds were howling down below in Panamint Valley, where a dust storm was beginning to kick up. Winter snow was still thick on the highest peaks of the Panamint range, and an incoming storm was developing and promising more precipitation.

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

Lenticular Clouds, Death Valley

May 2, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn lenticular clouds from above the Black Mountains and Death Valley

After a cold and windy final night camping in the Panamint Mountains of Death Valley National Park this spring, I woke up early and headed to an overlook along the summit ridge for the range before dawn. The most typical experience here is to watch the sun rise into clear skies above the desert landscape, but this time a weather system was approaching. It was cold, extremely windy, and the sky was filled with dark clouds. The only sunrise color I saw was along a distant band of light at the horizon, produced by clearer skies far to the southeast.

I had seen the giant lenticular cloud forming the previous afternoon. These clouds are almost a part of the landscape at times, arising in predictable locations and formed by interactions between the atmosphere and features such as mountain ridges. Unlike other clouds, the lenticular can remain almost stationary for long periods of time — but this is the first time I’ve awakened to see clouds from the previous day still there. The choice to use a monochrome interpretation allowed me greater interpretative latitude in the final image, and this let me draw attention to certain shapes mirrored by the clouds and the geology in the scene.

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

Panamint Valley, Wash

April 29, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A large desert wash curves towards the Panamint Valley

I always associate this view, of this canyon and the valley and mountains beyond, with leaving Death Valley. For many years I always access the park via the road up from Ridgecrest that passes through the desolate town of Trona, coming up the Panamint Valley before entering the park, either over Towne Pass or via Emigrant Pass and Wildrose Canyon. At some point I decided to take what I later determined to be the route favored by many other visitors, route 190 across to highway 395 at Olancha near the dry desolation of Owens Lake.

This view lies along that route. Shortly after leaving Panamint Valley the road passes up a bit of a canyon, crosses a ridge, and then tracks along the slopes paralleling this wash that runs out into Panamint Valley. The wash itself has a beautiful quality, curving gracefully around toward its arrival in the larger valley between the two dark, rounded hills. Across the Panamint Valley, at the base of the far mountains, there are sandy stretches which develop into full-blown dunes just a bit to the left of the area shown in the photograph. On this morning a weather from was coming in, producing some dramatic clouds above the Panamint Range.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: panamint

Before The Dust Storm

Panamint Valley and Mountains

Lenticular Clouds, Death Valley

Panamint Valley, Wash

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