Tag Archives: pass

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: People, Photographs: Yosemite

Tenaya Lake, January 2012

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Tenaya Lake, January 2012 - Skaters and walkers on frozen Tenaya Lake, accessible via the still-open Tioga Pass Road on January 16, 2012.
Skaters and walkers on frozen Tenaya Lake, accessible via the still-open Tioga Pass Road on January 16, 2012.

Tenaya Lake, January 2012. Yosemite National Park, California. January 16, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Skaters and walkers on frozen Tenaya Lake, accessible via the still-open Tioga Pass Road on January 16, 2012.

I have been meaning to post this photograph since I made it last month, on January 16, 2012. The serious California drought (or so it seems) of 2012 created very unusual conditions in the Sierra this winter. The Tioga Pass Road (highway 120) through Yosemite National Park usually closes by some time in November, and has been known to close as early as October. The early season this year made it appear that we might have a normal or even heavier than normal winter – early storms near the beginning of October brought a lot of snow to the range and temporarily closed the road more than once. But by December it became clear that this was not going to be a normal year at all, and by the end of the month there was almost no snow anywhere in the range.

A week before this visit I had crossed and re-crossed the pass on a trip to Death Valley. While I appreciated the convenience and shorter drive, I found the odd conditions unnerving. Aside from a few patches here and there, I saw no snow at all, though the seasonal cold had frozen the high country lakes. A week later it looked like a storm or two might finally arrive, so we decided to make the trip up to the Tuolumne area to see the high country in a state that we probably (hopefully!) won’t see again. During the week before this visit, local news stations around California had made this story well known, and they almost all mentioned that people were visiting Tenaya Lake. And, indeed, there were tons of people at the lake when we arrived. There were about as many cars as you might see on an August afternoon. People were clustered along the frozen edge of the lake, were walking along its borders, even setting up tables for picnics on the ice. A few people thought to bring ice skates and they were skating great distances. (Fortunately for us, most people went no farther than Tenaya, and the crowds decreased rapidly after that point.)

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

Snowflakes, Grass, and Frozen Lake

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Snowflakes, Grass, and Frozen Lake - Fresh snowflakes among leaves of grass on the frozen surface of Siesta Lake, Yosemite National Park.
Fresh snowflakes among leaves of grass on the frozen surface of Siesta Lake, Yosemite National Park.

Snowflakes, Grass, and Frozen Lake. Yosemite National Park, California. January 16, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fresh snowflakes among leaves of grass on the frozen surface of Siesta Lake, Yosemite National Park.

This past week we had the opportunity to do something that we’ll probably not get to do again – drive over Tioga Pass through Yosemite National Park in the middle of January. Until this year, the latest the road had been open was December 31. This year it was still open on January 17, though scheduled to close as I write this. It has been a very unusual weather year in many parts of California, including the Sierra. While the season began with earlier and heavier than usual snow storms way back in early October, this promising start to the snow season was just a tease. A month or so later, the tap was turned off and there was little rain through the end of the calendar year and on into January of 2012.

So with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity about to end with the promise of snow this week, we drove up the night before and then headed over Tioga Pass Road to Lee Vining and back, stopping frequently along the way. The weather in the morning was a bit of a surprise. I knew that a weak weather system – that had not brought any rain – was departing the Sierra, but we were surprised when we encountered very light snow flurries as we drove up Crane Flat Road to the junction with highway 120, and this continued as we started up Tioga Pass Road. When we arrived at Siesta Lake we found it partly sunny but still trying to snow just a bit. I set up to make a photograph of some trees in cloud-softened light, but as soon as I was ready to shoot the light died! I waited for a while, but finally decided that the light wasn’t returning. I decided to wander over to this small lake and see what I could find along the shoreline – and I found these dormant grasses, half-submerged in winter ice, with a sprinkling of snowflakes on the surface of the ice.

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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

East Side of Bishop Pass

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East Side of Bishop Pass - Trail and meadows below the east side of Bishop Pass, eastern Sierra Nevada range
Trail and meadows below the east side of Bishop Pass, eastern Sierra Nevada range

East Side of Bishop Pass. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. August 4, 2005. © Copyright 2005 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Trail and meadows below the east side of Bishop Pass, eastern Sierra Nevada range.

This photograph comes from about a dozen years ago. I recently came across it while sorting through older photograph files for a variety of reasons – general clearing out of old images, searching for photographs of a particular subject for a client, and seeing what older images I might have missed when I first made them. When I saw this photograph it evoked a whole series of fun recollections.

Nearly weeks earlier, I had begun a two-week-long backpack trip along a section of the John Muir Trail. At that time, the only section of the JMT that I had not hiked (at least once!) was an area between approximately Shadow Lake and the Muir Trail Ranch – and this was to be the trip on which I covered this remaining bit of trail. The trip started just fine, though in some territory that is not exactly my favorite portion of the range – the low areas around Devils Postpile. After passing by that national monument we headed south, passing Duck Lake and camping at Purple Lake.

The next morning I woke up feeling a bit under the weather, an unusual experience for me on the trail. The next leg of the trip was to take us through an area without an easy exit, and I became concerned about what would happen if my “feeling poorly” deteriorated into actually being sick. I reluctantly decided to leave my group to continue without me, and I backtracked over Duck Pass and down into the Mammoth Lakes area and headed home. (Ironically, by the time I got out I was feeling fine…)

Ending a trip this way just didn’t feel right, so I hatched a plan to show up and run into my friends on the last day of their trip. Since they were coming out over Bishop Pass, I crossed that pass into beautiful Dusy Basin a day earlier, and on the next morning hiked down the canyon so that I could be casually sitting on a rock as they came up the trail from LeConte Canyon. I have rarely seen people as surprised as they were when they found me! After our reunion and joining them for their last trail night, the next morning we were up early to hike out over Bishop Pass. This photograph was made shortly after we crossed the pass and began our descent to the trailhead.

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.

Commentary, Locations, Sierra Nevada Fall Color

Sierra Nevada Aspen Hunting and the Weather

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Something to think about for photographers headed to the eastern Sierra to photograph aspen color next week: The seven-day Yosemite to Kings Canyon weather forecast is calling for snow (!) on Wednesday and Thursday, and things don’t look like they’ll totally clear out on Friday. This has some ramifications:

  • Those of us who get to the eastern Sierra by way of one of the trans-Sierra passes may encounter difficulties if the forecast pans out. I would not be at all surprised to see a temporary closure of Tioga Pass Road (highway 120) though Yosemite, and other passes to the north could be affected. This makes for a very long drive for those of us in the SF Bay area!
  • A storm can affect the aspen color display. A cold snap can, or so many of us believe, encourage the colors to change. But wind can also bring down many of the leaves in a hurry. (I once arrived before dawn at North Lake to see – just barely – incredible color conditions in the grove the runs up the hillside on the far side of the lake. Moments later a snow squall blew in, and as the wind began to blow I retreated to my car for a half hour. When it passed, half of the leaves had blown down!
  • On the plus side, an early winter storm can bring some opportunities and advantages as well. Overcast and rainy/snowy weather can intensify the colors and create some very compelling and moody scenes. New snow adds something special to the scene, whether only on the higher peaks above or down among the trees.

It could get interesting, so check those weather forecasts and the road conditions on the mountain highways. Fall in the Sierra is a time of change in many ways. Pacific winter-type weather systems start to move through, and they can range from very mild to virtually full-blown winter storms. While most of them pass quickly, some can last for a few days and close passes. It would be very unusual for such an early October storm to actually mark the beginning of the winter road closures, but mid-October storms have done so in the past.

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