Tag Archives: tuolumne

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

Runoff Pool, Evening – Tuolumne Meadows

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Runoff Pool, Evening - Tuolumne Meadows

Runoff Pool, Evening – Tuolumne Meadows. Yosemite National Park, California. July 7, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Grass bordered early summer runoff pool in Toulumne Meadows reflects sunset clouds and the summit of Ragged Peak, Yosemite National Park, California.

I made this photograph on a very early-season visit to the Tuolumne Meadows area in early July of this year. Since this was a below-normal precipitation year, the road to the pass cleared a bit on the early side and by early July almost all of the snow was gone at road level – but there was still a good amount of run-off water in Tuolumne Meadows. (Though nothing like in the big precipitation years, when portions of the meadow become more lake than solid ground.) There were some interesting clouds this evening so I wandered out into one of my favorite areas in the lower end of the meadow as the day ended and photographed the new grasses and pools of water that reflected sky, clouds, and surrounding peaks. In the distance the summit of Ragged Peak marks the location of Young Lakes.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Corn Lily Leaves, Early Fall

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Corn Lily Leaves, Early Fall

Corn Lily Leaves, Early Fall. Cathedral Lakes, Yosemite National Park, California. September 26, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dry corn lily leaves and plants as Sierra Nevada summer plants go dormant at the beginning of the fall season – Upper Cathedral Lake, Yosemite National Park, California.

On the first evening of my brief two-day visit to Upper Cathedral Lake, I wandered up a narrow ravine near where we were camped, hoping to eventually get up high for some photographs of dome-like formations and the lake and Cathedral Peak beyond. But almost immediately I became distracted by much more intimate subjects closer at hand in the shaded and diffused light of the gully. Near the top of a narrow section I came across a large bed of old corn lily plants that had reached the end of their short summer-season lives and had fallen over in interesting and complex patterns.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Granite Cliff and Ledge – Upper Cathedral Lake

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Granite Cliff and Ledge - Upper Cathedral Lake

Granite Cliff and Ledge – Upper Cathedral Lake. Yosemite National Park, California. September 26, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fractured cliff face and bench with colorful lichens and trees near Upper Cathedral Lake, Yosemite National Park, California.

During the last week of September I managed to squeeze in a very shot pack trip to Upper Cathedral Lakes, just out of Tuolumne Meadows in the Yosemite National Park high country, where I met five outstanding Yosemite photographers who were there for a week of shooting. Although I was only at the lake for perhaps 24 hours, I tried to make the best of it and I shot early and late all around the upper lake.

On the first evening I decided to explore some rocky gullies ascending above the lake on the side opposite from Cathedral Peak. The first gully I followed was very narrow and quite deep – I had to climb a good distance to finally find a spot where I could climb out of it onto the glacier-smoother dome-like formations above the lake. This photograph shows a tremendously fractured section of the wall of this gully, with the bases of a few trees included for scale.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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Commentary

Winter arrives in the Sierra?

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A few years ago I did what was a traditional end-of-season backpack trip out of Tuolumne Meadows on the last weekend during which the NPS permits overnight parking on Tioga Pass road – this is typically on or just before October 15. It was a beautiful weekend with – as I always hope for in October – pleasant, sunny conditions and beautiful light.

The following weekend a backpacking buddy who had been unable to make that trip tried his own end-of-seasons visit, hoping to wander up into the Twenty Lakes Basin area just east of Tioga Pass. He arrived late and rolled out his bivy sack at the small campground by the lake right below Tioga Pass… and woke up the next morning with more than a half foot of snow on top of him and more on the way. He scrambled out of his bag, got into his car, and managed to get out just before the road was blocked. He liked to say that he was there for the switch from fall to winter… literally.

It sounds like something similar may happen over the next 24 hours. From all reports, one of the biggest October storms that we’ve seen in California in decades may be sweeping through tonight and tomorrow, bringing heavy winds, a lot of rain, and the potential for some significant snow at the higher elevations.

The folks at the Dweeb Report (interesting source of Sierra weather info) include an ominous sentence in their most recent update: “WINDS WITH THIS SYSTEM OVER THE CREST COULD REACH BETWEEN 120MPH AND 140MPH OVER THE CENTRAL SIERRA.”

Of course, you knew this was leading to a comment on aspens, right? Given the rather strange conditions for aspen color this fall, somehow it doesn’t seem at all surprising that the storm might bring down a good portion of the remaining leaves!