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California Fall Color, Commentary, Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Sierra Nevada Fall Color

2022 Fall Color

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It is that time of year again — my favorite season! This past week on walks here in the San Francisco Bay Are I have noticed the signs of the seasonal change. The sun is setting an hour earlier, our first (early!) Pacific weather front is arriving this weekend, some trees are starting to change colors, and the sound of old leaves skittering along the ground in the breeze is everywhere.

Autumn Aspens, Lake, Wildfire Smoke
Wildfire smoke drifts over the Sierra Nevada crest above a lake surrounded by autumn aspens. @ Copyright G Dan Mitchell.

Fall color is more prevalent here in California than many realize. The earliest hints come to the high country of the Sierra Nevada in late August, when something in the air changes, corn lily plants turn yellow, the bilberry starts to pick up a bit of red, and you might even find an odd yellow aspen leaf here and there. Things pick up as we progress through September, and by the very end of the month it is often possible to start finding a few examples of good aspen color up high. Then the color works its way down to lower country, the valleys, and the coast over the following months. I’ve sometimes photographed “fall color” in the Central Valley as late as… January!

The main aspen color season in the Sierra peaks during the first half of October. It tends to start at higher elevations as early as the very end of September, becoming quite pronounced early in October, and working down to lower elevations into the third week of the month. If you can only go once, targeting your visit for about one week into the month is a good plan.

No one knows for sure how the season will evolve. Some things stay relatively constant from year to year, while others vary quite a bit based on temperature fluctuations, the amount of precipitation that fell during the year, whether or not early storms sweep through, and more.

I share annual updates on my Sierra Nevada Fall Color page at this website. I just posted this years first message there today — it is mostly some early thinking about how the season may evolve, along with a record of what has happened in some previous seasons. The latter may be useful as you plan your autumn color search in California.

One more thing: I may have something new to write about regarding fall color in a few weeks. Stay tuned…

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Commentary

Calphoto – a quick note

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It looks like the Calphoto Fall Color in California page is back up and running with lots of updates. This has been one of the best California fall color sites for several years, and if you visit right now you’ll see lots of useful reports.

Locations, News

More Links to Current Eastern Sierra Fall Aspen Color Reports

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I’m catching up on some online reading this evening, and thought I’d share a list of some reports on eastern Sierra fall color that I’ve come across. In no particular order:

  • A quick eastern Sierra fall color update from Greg Russell/Alpenglow Images – Greg’s brief report mentions visiting the Bishop Creek area on Saturday along with visits to Rock Creek and June Lakes Loop.
  • Richard Wong offers a brief report on Bishop Creek Canyon Fall Color at the California Nature Photographers blog. (Yes, my report from this weekend is posted there, too.) Richard covers several areas in the Bishop Creek and North/South/Sabrina Lakes area.
  • The Eastern Sierra Fall Color group on Flickr includes a lot of recent on-the-scene photographs (you may be able to use them to make some decisions about your destination) and the discussion forum includes a lot of posts by those who are there and have been there recently. There is also an interesting thread on the all-important question of where to eat in the eastern Sierra! (Discussion forums only open to group members.)
  • Elizabeth Carmel’s Landscape Photography blog points out a Sacramento Bee Interactive Guide to Fall Colors. (The guide has some interesting and useful information – perhaps most importantly a map with many great aspen locations identified. However, the interactive part of the guide would be even more useful if the information was a bit more up-to-date. I wonder if they might think about building something like this with input from a larger group of photographers who are on the scene?)
  • Journal of My Travels for the Perfect Photo, Inge Fernau’s photography blog, has lots of good advice and reports on photographing Sierra aspens.
  • It looks like Carol Leigh may be updating her Fall Color in California page once again. This is one of the “classic” sites for locating information about this topic, and typically includes lots of reports from those in the field. (I’m wondering though, if it is a bit less current than in the past. (I recently sent an update last week and it never appeared on the page…)
  • Greg A. Lato has posted a sequence of three posts about his visit to the eastern Sierra. Visit his latoga Photography site and then look for the “recent blog posts” section lower on the page.
  • Leon Turnbull reports on a visit to the giant aspen groves at the top of Monitor Pass and a perhaps unfortunate abundance of certain other travelers while he was there. (The groves atop Monitor Pass are huge, and seem to me to be a bit less well-known than some of the areas further south. I was a bit surprised at his report that many of the trees had not yet changed colors, since I frequently find that they change here just a bit earlier than in some other locations on my circuit. A good aspen route is to go up over Carson Pass and then over Monitor to highway 395.)
  • The Life on the Eastern Slope blog mentions conditions in Lundy Canyon, Tioga Pass, and other nearby areas. (I drove past but did not enter Lundy Canyon on Sunday – I could see colors up high above Lundy, but cannot offer first-hand info on conditions down in the canyon. I also went over Tioga Pass twice and saw some pretty good colors just east of the pass, though colors down in Lee Vining Canyon have not changed yet.)
  • I mentioned it earlier, but it is worth mentioning that Michael Frye posted a bit of a guide to photographing fall colors in Yosemite. (For the record, if you are looking for great aspen photography opportunities, Yosemite is not your best choice. But there are other types of fall color in Yosemite that bring me back every year.)
  • Greg Boyer has posted his Fall Color Update #8 from Bishop. His view is that this coming weekend will likely be the prime time to shoot – which is pretty much in line with what I’m thinking. I would not be surprised to find that some areas in the upper Bishop Creek drainage will have lost leaves by then, but there are tons of trees a bit lower… and many other eastern Sierra areas should be in great shape. (But watch the weather – there is a chance of a change this weekend.) Other entries at Greg’s One Horse Studio blog also offer good information and perspectives on fall color.

Whew! I’m sure I’ve missed some other useful resources – feel free to share via a comment.