Tag Archives: slabs

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

Trees, Granite, and Sky Near Olmsted Point

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Trees, Granite, and Sky Near Olmsted Point - Sunset light on a trees and weathered granite slabs above Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park
Sunset light on a trees and weathered granite slabs above Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park

Trees, Granite, and Sky Near Olmsted Point. Yosemite National Park, California. September 16, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sunset light on a trees and weathered granite slabs above Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park.

This is another “opportunistic photograph” made on my way back home from a three-day mid-September backpacking trip in the eastern Sierra. We had finished up at the McGee Creek trailhead around 3:00, gotten cleaned up, headed into Mammoth Lakes for a celebratory post-trip Mexican dinner, and I found myself on the road back toward the Bay Area close to 5:00 p.m. I figured that this might well get me over Tioga Pass close to 6:00 p.m. and allow me to find some place with suitably interesting subjects and light before the sun went down. I crossed the pass on schedule, then passed through Tuolumne Meadows (where I had photographed a few days earlier), and decided that it would be a good idea to go a bit further west – and a bit closer to home! – before stopping to shoot.

Most of the interesting light was gone when I got to Tenaya Lake, so I figured I might as well head up to Olmsted Point and see what I could find. Obviously, the classic “back side” view of Half Dome is there, as well as the view back toward Tenaya Lake and Mount Conness. I stopped and picked out an “insurance” shot of Half Dome, though the light initially didn’t look all that spectacular. While talking to some other visitors I missed a bit of lovely light on Conness, though I probably didn’t have a long enough lens anyway. (I was traveling light, with only the limited set of equipment that I take backpacking.) However, besides the obvious there is quite a bit of other interesting stuff to see right around Olmsted, especially late in the day when the last light slants across low ridges to the west and picks up bits and pieces of the landscape – a tree here, a rock there. This little vignette was high on the granite slabs above Olmsted, and as a bit of late light glanced across the rocks and trees, an angled bit of cloud passed by, mirroring the angle of the ridge.

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

Mount Conness and Ragged Peak, Forest

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Mount Conness and Ragged Peak, Forest - Evening light slants across forest below Ragged Peak and Mount Conness, Yosemite National Park, California.
Evening light slants across forest below Ragged Peak and Mount Conness, Yosemite National Park, California.

Mount Conness and Ragged Peak, Forest. Yosemite National Park, California. July 11, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light slants across forest below Ragged Peak and Mount Conness, Yosemite National Park, California.

This photograph was made from the Tuolumne Meadows area with a long lens, and it includes the heights of Mt. Conness at the far right, the lesser prominence of Ragged Peak at the left, a shaded ridge running above the Young Lakes basin, and a closer bit of typical Yosemite forest mixed with a bit of dome-like granite, with sunset light slanting across from the left. By the way, I wondered for some time where the name “Mt. Conness” came from. I finally looked it up during the past year, and I found out that the namesake was Senator Conness, one of the two California senators during roughly the Civil War period – Conness was responsible for the legislation that initially set parts of the current Yosemite National Park aside for protection and preservation. All in all, a person deserving of a peak with his name.

Although photographed here from some distance, I know parts of the landscape encompassed by this photograph quite well, including the visible portions and some that are hidden from sight in this photo. For a number of years I have made a habit of visiting the Young Lakes area at least once each season, often late in the season when the summer crowds have dissipated – though I have also visited very early in the season, and I have the mosquito stories to prove it! Young Lakes lie on the other side of the shaded ridge traversing the center of the photograph, and I’ve often looked up at that ridge from the lakes. I have also hiked up into the valley on this side of the ridge. The trail to Young Lakes crosses the wooded area beyond the sunlit trees and passes through a beautiful semi-meadow area below Ragged Peak, a place where beautiful lupine flowers may be found at the right time of the year and from where one can obtain some panoramic views of a lot of high Yosemite Peaks. On one of my first visits to Young Lakes, it was so late in the season that the backcountry ranger who was patrolling the area apparently had little to do, and one morning we ended up having a very long conversation along the shore of one of the lakes. I remarked that a particular little gully in roughly the area of Ragged Peak looked like it might be interesting, and he shared enough information about the route that I chose to use it rather than the regular trail on my return to the trailhead. Mt. Conness, here the only peak or ridge still fully in sunlight, towers above everything else in this area. I have not climbed it, though I have investigated some trail less areas around its base and I’ve looked at it from almost every side.

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.