Tag Archives: pass

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

Receding Ridges, Trees, Morning

August 24, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning haze and tree covered glacial ridges, Yosemite National Park

This is a view that has long caught my attention. It is very close to a place where [i]every[/i] park visitor stops to take in a famous view, but I suspect that quite a few miss this view in their anticipation of the stop for the more famous overlook. Some years ago a group of friends and I had an unusual experience here. One of my long-time backpacking buddies and I love listening to classical music on long drives, and we sometimes attempt to time the music so that particularly appropriate and impressive points in the music may coincide with our arrival at appropriate and impressive places. (Full backpacking and music geekery into one thing, and that’s what you end up with! ;-) We we listening to Mahler’s second symphony and we managed to hit the overwhelmingly powerful conclusion of that work right as we came around the bend to see this view. Needless to say, that made an impression on me, and the place is both special on its own and now associated with that experience.

Music aside, this is a stunning bit of Yosemite high country scenery, and it is perhaps (somewhat ironically) revealed even more clearly in the morning haze seen here. In the foreground trees manage to eke out an existence on the nearly solid granite slabs of a glaciated dome. Another similar ridge rises in the middle distance with more trees. And it keeps going. On the other side of that ridge there is a huge and deep valley, but across its expanse there is even more of the glaciated granite terrain, all of it highlighted in the early morning back-light.

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

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

Lake, Rocks, and Clouds

May 26, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

I recently revisited this older photograph, one that I had shared in a color rendition in the past, and this time I felt like I wanted to see it in monochrome. This is a sort of scene familiar to anyone who has spent much time in the high country of the Sierra Nevada, that region where lakes, large sub-alpine meadows, sparse trees, and surrounding peaks come together to produce a landscape like no other.

I often visit this lake, typically several times each season. I go there for several reasons, ranging from practical to aesthetic. The lake is not too far from roadways, and sometimes I have just enough time on a late afternoon to park my car, load up my pack, and do the short, steep hike up and over a nearby ridge to get to this alpine world. In fact, Once there I wander this familiar landscape, often revisiting lakes, rocks, streams, and trees that I have visited many times before. As the evening wears on, I know that I should head back to my car before dark, but I am never able to leave quite soon enough, and I end up lingering through sunset and into early dusk, often ending up on the that ridge between me and the road as darkness comes on, and arriving at my car after dark.

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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

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Spillway Lake

January 4, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Afternoon light on Spillway Lake in the Yosemite backcountry

Although it was a bit more than nine years ago, I remember this hike very well. I had a free afternoon, so I decided to hike out to a familiar Sierra Crest pass that I had visited before, but along the way I chose to take a detour up past the lake see in the photograph. This route followed a trail along a small, singing creek that topped out in a fairly level subalpine meadow that surrounded the lake, and the last bit of the hike was on open, smooth ground. I paused at the lake, stopping at some rocks on near the small peninsula visible near the lower part of the image to eat a snack, drink some water, and quietly take in the scene.

The trail to the lake ends here, but the route up across open terrain to a nearby pass was fairly obvious in this country, so I simply passed along the edge of the lake and then headed up toward the wide saddle. It wasn’t long before I arrived there, and after my visit to the pass I started back down along the trial that came to the pass from another nearby drainage. I traversed a high ridge and had a good clear view back down to “my” lake, now far below and luminous in the afternoon light and backed by the tall dark hill with talus slope above leading to a higher ridge.

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

Ellery Lake Moonrise, Autumn

December 30, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The autumn mood rises over recent snow on ridges above Ellery Lake near the eastern edge of Yosemite National Park

I’ll say good bye to 2014 with a few sunset photographs this week. Recently I had reasons to go back through over a decades worth of photographs, including many that I have not shared. While this is certainly work, it is also occasionally a source of wonderful surprises — as seeing the older photographs triggers memories of photographic adventures that I haven’t thought about for a while and as I “discover” photographs that have sat in the raw file archives for many years. They get left there for a range of reasons. Sometimes I just didn’t yet “see” them the right way at the time I made them, or in other cases I got busy before I finished working my way thoroughly through a set of images and I moved on too soon. (This may be yet another reason to be conservative when it comes to deleting “unneeded” files!)

This photograph came from the very end of several days of photographing fall color in the eastern Sierra. It was a special few days, as there was light snow and wonderful color for most of the time I was there, and these conditions had me shooting around the clock, from before sunrise until it was too dark to make more photographs. On this final day I did some shooting in the eastern Sierra near Lee Vining in the late afternoon and finally decided that I was finished and that it was time to start back home through Yosemite. In the early evening light I headed up Lee Vining Canyon toward Tioga Pass, and as I drove by Ellery Lake I found these lovely conditions: new snow on the ground, golden hour light on the peaks and reflected in the surface of the lake, a nearly full moon rising above the shoulder of the high peaks, into blue sky slightly streaked with thing lines of clouds, and the complex symmetries of curving ridges. I couldn’t have asked for a better benediction to mark the final photographs of this trip.

The autumn mood rises over recent snow on ridges above Ellery Lake near the eastern edge of Yosemite National Park

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: pass

Receding Ridges, Trees, Morning

Lake, Rocks, and Clouds

Spillway Lake

Ellery Lake Moonrise, Autumn

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