Tag Archives: snow

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

The Last Leaves

Image 2 Comments
The Last Leaves
An aspen tree with a few remaining autum leaves, against a cliff face wtih snow.

The Last Leaves. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Aspen trees with a few remaining autumn leaves, against a cliff face with snow.

The Sierra Nevada experience of the past year-and-a-half or so has been… strange. Everything has changed since our world was turned upside down in March of 2020, and my ability to visit and photograph my favorite mountain range has not been an exception. During the first summer we saw many locations simply shut down, and I didn’t really get into the Sierra until the very end of that summer — but only for very brief visits and one aborted pack trip that I had to cancel as a result of the intense wildfire smoke. By last winter I was again able to more comfortably get to non-Sierra locations including Death Valley, where it was possible to work in relative isolation, but the Sierra remained difficult to access. I got up there a few times later in the season, but it wasn’t until this fall that I felt that I was beginning to reconnect with this landscape.

In mid-October we put together an actual road trip. It began with a couple of nights in the Eastern Sierra before continuing on to Southwest Utah, another location that I hadn’t been to in far too long. This brief autumn Sierra visit (which followed another visit a week earlier) was a bit later than usual, and we ended up visiting a few places that I usually overlook… and heading to a few “old friends” even though they were past their prime. I made this photograph in one of those places, a location where the colors are usually spectacular a bit earlier in the season. I knew that wouldn’t be the case this time, so we went there a bit later in the day after photographing more promising morning subjects. We arrived, made a quick stop, and I spotted this small group of trees in the shadow of a cliff. They were nearly at the end of their color transition and most of the leaves were gone, but those that remained glowed in the bit of light arriving over the top of the cliff.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley

White Mountains, Autumn Storm

Image 2 Comments
White Mountains, Autumn Storm
An autumn storm drops snow on the summit of the White Mountains.

White Mountains, Autumn Storm. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An autumn storm drops snow on the summit of the White Mountains.

Autumn is fascinating time of transition in the Sierra Nevada. One day it can be sunny a warm, with the landscape filled with the golden and brown tones of fall — perhaps the most inviting form of the Sierra landscape. The next day something resembling winter sweeps in, the wind rises and the skies turn gray, and snow falls among the peaks. While summer is the time of easy access to most of the range, I’ve always had a great fondness for autumn in the Sierra — it is, without a doubt, my favorite time of year there.

We had ascended high on the giant fan at the base of the range above Bishop, looking for new perspectives and for aspen groves a bit more off the beaten track. The previous day and night had brought an early weather front through the range, closing some of the passes, and laying down a few inches of snow on the highest regions. From our position we looked back across foothill formations and the Owens Valley toward the immense White Mountains, a range that is just as high as the Sierra, where new snow coated the cloud-covered peaks.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Conifers and Autumn Aspens, Snow-Dusted Peaks

Image 2 Comments
Conifers and Autumn Aspens, Snow-Dusted Peaks
An early season dusting of snow above colorful aspen groves surrounding conifers.

Conifers and Autumn Aspens, Snow-Dusted Peaks. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An early season dusting of snow above colorful aspen groves surrounding conifers.

Some of you may be starting to feel a sense of loss as summer comes to an end, a nostalgia for those slow days of the warm season. I, on the other hand, am happy to see summer go. My two favorite seasons are coming! I love autumn with its sense of continuous change and the remarkable shows of fall color. And while winter may not be the most comfortable season, in many ways it is the most interesting, a time when we are reminded that sometimes the climate is a challenge.

This photograph comes from a few years back on a day that features one of my favorite sorts of early autumn days in the Eastern Sierra. This would be a day when the aspens are changing color and when an early winter-like weather front passes through and drops a dusting of snow on the highest peaks. (My other favorite type of Sierra autumn day is entirely different — the kind of sunny day when the sun retains some warmth, the light is soft, the colors are golden, and the backcountry is nearly deserted.) This photograph looks across a large grove of (mostly) aspen trees that leads up the eastern slopes toward high peaks with some of the newly fallen snow.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Sierra Foothills, White Mountains

Image Leave a comment
Sierra Foothills, White Mountains
A long view from the Buttermilks in the Sierra Nevada eastern foothills to the crest of the distant White Mountains.

Sierra Foothills, White Mountains. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A long view from the Buttermilks in the Sierra Nevada eastern foothills to the crest of the distant White Mountains.

Recently I was once again pondering how the way we approached the Sierra Nevada at first affected our overall perceptions of the character of the Range of Light. As I have noted before, during the first decades of my relationship with these mountains I approached from the west, crossing semi-coastal mountains, crossing the agricultural Central Valley, rising gradually into oak-grasslands and eventually to conifer forest, and only much later finally arriving in the “High Sierra” world of open meadows and alpine peaks. Contrast this with the experience of those approaching from the east, where the range presents a very long “wall” of peaks that towers above high desert, in places rising by as much as 10,000 feet above that dry landscape.

This photograph is, probably obviously, one that focuses on that eastern part of the Sierra. But here I look away from the Sierra Nevada, past the rugged and “barren” terrain of dry hills at the base of the range, across the expanse of Owens Valley, and toward the (also dry) peaks of the White Mountains. To put it plainly, you won’t see anything like this on the west side!

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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