Tag Archives: tuolumne

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

Dome and Meadow Trees

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Dome and Meadow Trees
Dome and Meadow Trees

Dome and Meadow Trees. Yosemite National Park, California. August 7, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Beams of sunset light, shining through breaks in clouds, momentarily illuminate Tuolumne Meadows trees and the granite slopes of Lembert Dome

This is a sort of companion photograph to one I posted earlier that was taken at about the same time, but more tightly composed and focusing on just the shoulder of Lembert Dome and the slopes of Mount Dana beyond. This was one of those Sierra evenings that started out with very mediocre light, but which also held the potential for something special to happen if things were to play out just the right way. Due to a wildfire over the crest near Mammoth Lakes, the sky was quite hazy. A high layer of clouds added to the gloom. I had spent the early evening trying to find some way to photograph these conditions, but was coming up short.

Not too long before I made this photograph, I had seen the gray murk suddenly lit by the warm glow of light coming underneath the edge of the high clouds far to the west as the sun dropped toward the horizon. This is not an uncommon event when the conditions line up correctly in the high Sierra, but this time it was a bit different due to the haze. The light, which might otherwise have been so colorful and bright as to almost be beyond belief, was instead muted and softened, though no less warm. A few minutes before I shot this image, the scene had been quite different – the sun had been behind those high clouds. But as I watched this it looked to me like the sun might find its way through a gap in the clouds, so I was ready to swing my camera to the east and capture Lembert Dome and other features in this light. Here that warm evening light glances across the face of the dome and softly lights some trees at the edge of the forest around Tuolumne Meadows.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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.

Commentary, Reader Questions

About the Yosemite “Rim” fire… and more

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UPDATE and a NOTE:

Update: Shortly after I posted this, my reports on highway 120 through the park via the Tuolumne Meadows area  were rendered incorrect/outdated by way of an updated announcement from the park service as follows:

“Beginning at 12:00pm on Wednesday, August 28th, Tuolumne Meadows and the High Sierra will only be accessible via Highway 120 East through Lee Vining.  The Tioga Rd/Hwy 120 East will be temporarily closed between White Wolf Lodge and the Big Oak Flat Rd./Hwy 120 West at Crane Flat; the closure is estimated to be 3 to 4 days.  Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, the High Sierra Camps, and Tuolumne Meadows and Porcupine Flat campgrounds all remain open.”

Basically, this means that you will not be able to use highway 120 as a route across the Sierra until further notice. I’m not surprised – in fact, I’ve been somewhat surprised that the road remained open this long. Apparently the following URL is also a good source of updates from the park: http://www.yosemitepark.com/yosemite-fire-update.aspx

Note: All of which brings me back to my original statement that I don’t have inside information on this fire, and that anyone traveling to the area needs to check official sources for conditions updates. I will likely not update this page as things change, so the information posted here should be regarded as potentially being out of date!

My original post follows…

—

A few people have asked me for information about the “Rim” fire which started not far from Groveland near highway 120, and which is currently burning along the northwest boundary of Yosemite National Park, generally moving east and north toward the highway 108 area. While I know much of this area fairly well from many years (decades, actually) of visits, I do not have any inside information about the fire itself, nor am I an expert on wildfires. One good source of (limited but objective) information is the Stanislaus National Forest Rim Fire Incident web page. A map on this page is a quite amazing source of information, especially when combined with some familiarity with the area and a reading of various written reports. (The version on the main page seems to be based on Google Maps, and allows you to scroll around and zoom in.) Lots of folks who live and work in the area are sharing updates on the usual social media sites. The Mariposa Gazette is another local news source.

The fire started on August 17 more or less midway between Groveland and the  northwest park entrance and not far off of the highway 120 corridor near the Rim of the World area overlooking the canyon of the Tuolumne River. (Highway 120 is a common route for entry to the park from the west and northwest, and it connects via Tuolumne Meadows and Tioga Pass to the east side of the Sierra at the town of Lee Vining.) The spread of the fire at first was somewhat quick, which is no surprise given the extremely dry conditions in the Sierra following a second very dry winter and almost no real precipitation since late 2012. Then, between about August 20 and 23, the fire exploded, expanding  very quickly to cover a huge area generally to the east and north of the starting point, with the fire generally racing northeast but also spreading to the north and south. Continue reading About the Yosemite “Rim” fire… and more →

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Grazing Deer, Ragged Peak

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Grazing Deer, Ragged Peak
Grazing Deer, Ragged Peak

Grazing Deer, Ragged Peak. Yosemite National Park, California. August 7, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A group of deer graze in Tuolumne Meadows near sunset beneath the summit of distant Ragged Peak

Perhaps I’ve simply missed this in the past, but on this early August trip to the Tuolumne Meadows area I saw a herd of deer grazing in the meadow in the evening that was larger than any I have encountered before. I’ve often seen small groups of perhaps a half-dozen or so there, but this group had at least two dozen individuals on the two evenings I was there. Many were bucks with antlers, but there were also some very young and very frisky critters among them, including one who seemed to be the ringleader of periodic high-speed races back and forth across the meadow. While waiting for interesting light for photographing other subjects (and that light is just beginning to appear on the dome behind the meadow) I spent some time with the long lens photographing them.

There are, of course, quite a few ways to photograph wildlife, ranging from what amount to intimate and close-up portraits to photographs that show the animals in their landscape – with the latter verging on “landscape with animals,” a different thing than much wildlife photography. I like doing both, but here I was thinking a lot more about photographing the animals in their world. This affected my approach in a couple of perhaps obvious ways. First, while I could have gotten quite a bit closer with the long lens I was using, I hung back so that I could include more than one deer in the frame, include more of the surrounding landscape, and not intrude to closely on the deer. Second, as soon as I had clicked of a first “insurance shot” of the animals, I stopped and looked at the landscape in order to find things that I could align with the deer. In this case, I was able to move some distance to one side and get a group to line up with the low dome (which, lucky for me, got hit with a bit of soft evening sunlight at the right moment!) and the distant ridge holding Ragged Peak, an area that I know quite well from many pack trips into nearby areas.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Forest, Dome, and Distant Mountain

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Forest, Dome, and Distant Mountain
Forest, Dome, and Distant Mountain

Forest, Dome, and Distant Mountain. Yosemite National Park, California. August, 7, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A last beam of sunset light illuminates the granite slabs of Lembert Dome and the distant slopes of Mount Dana above Tuolumne Meadows

This afternoon of a day when I was in the area of the Sierra crest near the Tioga Pass entrance to Yosemite National Park had turned murky, with a combination of wildfire smoke and high clouds that largely killed the interesting light as the “golden hour” approached. I decided to drive along Tioga Pass Road as the day came to an end, and look for whatever interesting light might appear. There is a lighting condition that can sometimes turn a “blah” evening into something amazing in the Sierra – though I wasn’t too optimistic on this evening. On an evening when clouds overhead obscure the late-day light, the clouds sometimes end a bit to the west of the high country, and as the sun drops below those clouds to the west there may be a last-minute glow that must be seen to be believed. You most certainly cannot count on this happening – sometimes the sun simply drops behind clouds and the light goes out. But if it is a possibility I will often go to great lengths to be ready for it.

Even knowing about this light, I was surprised on this evening – twice! In the first instance I had thought I saw a very subtle lightening and intensification of color on the shoulder of one distant ridge far up in the distant Rafferty Creek drainage, so I quickly found a place to turn around and return to a roadside pull-out where I thought I could photograph it. As I quickly worked to set up my tripod and camera… the glow faded and disappeared. I looked around for evidence that it might return – a bit of light elsewhere in the landscape – but seeing none I got back in the car. I had driven no more than 30 seconds down the road when the entire landscape to my south and east lit up with glorious warm light! I quickly – again – turned around and drove back and managed to get a couple of shots before it disappeared again. I then went on down to Tuolumne Meadows with a vague plan to look for interesting light or to photograph an exceptionally large herd of deer that I had seen on an earlier evening. When I arrived, the light was not stunning, but the deer where there, so I put on my “wildlife photographer hat” and a long lens. As I photographed them in less than amazing light, I saw a bright spot in the clouds to the west that just might line up to send a beam or light across the meadow from west to east – and sure enough, a moment later the light began to gradually build. Since I had no time to move or change lenses at this point, I thought about what I could do with the long lens before this light disappeared, so I focused on Lembert Dome, bathed in this light at the far end of the meadow and with the more distant slopes of Mount Dana beyond.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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.