Tag Archives: pass

Reader Question: Yosemite in October

July 31, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

“Tom” recently sent me a question about visiting Yosemite in October, and I thought I would reply here where others can see the information, too.

I will be in CA in October and was planning on going up to Yosemite for a few days. Any advice you’d care to share would be greatly appreciated. :)

Before I answer your question below, you might be interested in my book, California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra, available from Heyday Books and from Amazon. It shares a lot of what I have learned about locating and photographing Sierra Nevada fall color, along with a large collection of my autumn photography in locations from the eastern Sierra to Yosemite Valley.

October may be my favorite time of the year to be in the Sierra in general and in Yosemite in particular. While some things that draw people to Yosemite (waterfalls, for example) are not likely to be at their best, there are many other wonderful attractions at this time of year. October is a transition month in the Sierra, with early October often having the character of late summer and late October often feeling more like early winter. Conditions can change quickly, and warm and sunny days may be followed by a day of rain or snow.

I have divided the following description geographically to separately describe Yosemite Valley, the Yosemite high country, and the east side of the Sierra Nevada range.

Yosemite Valley – The busy summer tourism season winds down in September after the Labor Day weekend, and by October the Valley is no longer quite the crowded, urbanized, noisy zoo that it can be on the worst days during the summer. (I generally steer clear of the Valley in June, July, August, and early September.) The meadows will have turned golden brown already, and real autumn colors begin to appear later in the month. While some are subtle, such as the transition of the oak tree leaves, others are quite striking, including brilliant fall colors of maples and dogwood trees. I make a habit of shooting autumn colors in The Valley every fall right around the end of October or beginning of November. (You’ll often find me there on Halloween!) Continue reading Reader Question: Yosemite in October →

Commentary, Locations

Yosemite High Country – A Brief Late July Report

July 30, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Carefully timing my visit to miss the weekend crowds, I spent the better part of the last week of July (2011) in the Yosemite National Park high country along and around Tioga Pass Road. I posted the first photograph from this visit earlier today, and more will appear here soon. But while the visit is still fresh in my mind, I thought I’d share a few observations and comments that might be useful to others heading there or to other parts of the high Sierra soon.

In a typical late July, all of the snow is melted out at “campground elevations” (generally 8000′ – 9000′ or so – Tuolumne Meadows is at 8600′), essentially all of the usual high country areas are accessible by trail or cross-country travel, wildflowers are at or near their peak, mosquito populations have reached their peak, and visitors are starting to arrive en masse for day use, camping, and backpacking. With the exception of the influx of visitors, this is not quite a typical season, however.

Snow – As I drove up Tioga Pass Road on July 26, the first surprise was finding that there were still large snow patches in some forested areas as low as 8000′ or so. I don’t recall seeing this much snow so low so late in the season in the past. (My memory may not include the lower elevations at this time of year in 1996, the last year with such impressive snow fall.) I stayed at the Porcupine Flat campground, and at least one site there still had enough snow as to make it pretty unusable. Continue reading Yosemite High Country – A Brief Late July Report →

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

Juniper Trees, Morning Light

July 30, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light falls on rugged Juniper trees growing in glaciated terrain near Yosemite’s Olmsted Point.

The Yosemite high country along (and beyond) Tioga Pass Road, which crossed the Sierra through the national park, is a land shaped by glaciers. The night before I had decided that the morning photography subjects would be in an area of granite domes, glacial erratics, small ponds, and rugged granite-bound trees in an area generally centered around the iconic Olmsted Point viewpoint.

My first subject, generally defined, was going to be an area of large granite slabs on a ridge that I knew would be hit by the early morning sun shortly after sunrise. I arrived in the general area after dawn but before the direct light arrived here, and I headed up the slabs to scope out possible subjects. The atmosphere was quite hazy, which can be a mixed blessing for photography. On one hand, distant subjects are muted an indistinct. On the other, the light on closer subjects can be diffused and soft, and this helps fill in shaded areas. It also means that more distant background elements can be muted both in contrast and color saturation. When I found this rugged cluster of old juniper trees, I looked for a composition that would catch the first light striking them from behind and also include a bit of the more distant exfoliated dome as background.

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

Late Afternoon, Tenaya Lake

July 8, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ice covers the surface of Tenaya Lake on the day of the mid-June opening of Tioga Pass Road as afternoon clouds cluster around the summit of Mount Conness, Yosemite National Park.

After the wild sunset-illuminated versions of this scene that I’ve posted recently, I thought it might be a relief to post something more subtle! This photograph was also made on the evening of June 18, the day that Tioga Pass Road opened for the 2011 season. A bit earlier I had photographed along the shoreline of Tenaya Lake – the ice-covered area in the lower portion of this image – where I had juxtaposed melting ice, deep blue water, and interesting clouds. When I finished there I had a decision to make – whether to head back up toward the pass, continue to photograph around the lake, or try to get a shot of Mount Conness from Olmsted Point. Since I had been in contact with a client concerning Mount Conness photographs just a few days earlier, I decided to try that third choice.

When I arrived at Olmsted, conditions were a bit unpromising. Clouds had come up over the Sierra crest and Conness was completely obscured. In addition, a certain type of gloomy haze and cloudiness was taking much of the energy out of the scene. Clouds to the west were washing out the light, too. Many times I don’t give up immediately in situations like this, at least not until I’ve spent a bit of time trying to get a sense of where things might be headed. (Ultimately on this evening that turned out to be a good decision, as near sunset one of the most intense displays of Sierra evening color occurred… but that it a story I’ve already told in earlier posts.) As I watched, the clouds around Conness began to move a bit and every so often a bit of the tip of the mountain would poke through. During one of these moments, a bit of light filtered through the high clouds from the west and glanced across the slopes of Polly Dome and struck the upper reaches of Medlicott Dome.

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