Snow in Yosemite and California Poppies
After much grousing about missing the great Yosemite Valley snowstorm the weekend March 18 (“um, honey, I know it’s your birthday and all, but, you see, there’s this really great snowstorm coming, and, um….”), a friend contacted me April 12th to tell me that they’d updated the forecast for the Valley to include 8–12 inches of snow the next night. Following a bunch of rushed planning and many messages back and forth, I decided to go and would pick up one of the photographers I’d met out at the Anza-Borrego meetup in March, Tony Payne, in Los Angeles on the way.
Getting through Los Angeles from San Diego, headed north, on a weekday morning is NOT FUN, so I was up early and out… and making good time up I-5 through Los Angeles until… someone in the line of cars in front of me braked hard, the next person had to brake harder, and so on down the line until some chump stood no chance of being able to stop in time. I was that chump. My first accident in 30 years of driving. And what really annoys me is being told that I was at fault… that I should have been far enough behind the car in front to be able to stop. I’m sorry, have these insurance nitwits ever driven in heavy traffic in Los Angeles?? There is no way that you can be whatever distance your stand-on-your-brakes-as-hard-as-you-can-at-freeway-speeds stopping distance behind the car in front of you. If you’re that far back, another three cars will fill the empty space.
Many hours and a 4WD rental beast of a midnight black Tahoe later, I was again on my way north to get Tony. After we threw all his gear in the Tahoe and got back on the freeway, it started POURING rain so hard that the Grapevine was a river flowing down into the city… and trying to take us with it! With snow on the mountains at the top of the Grapevine, we may have been lucky to get through before they closed it. Up through the Central Valley and once off 99 at Merced onto 140, the skies were clearing with gorgeous big poofy clouds and late afternoon light. All down 140 and especially once driving along the Merced River, we kept passing absolutely gorgeous photo opportunities—rolling green hills, beautifully rounded trees on hilltops, wildflowers everywhere, then snow on the Merced with Yosemite’s granite peaks in the background once we got closer. We kept thinking hard about stopping to photograph, but were running late to make it to Tunnel View by sunset. We banked on Tunnel View, the clearing clouds, and snow… which is close to what we got! It’s a toss-up as to whether we should have stopped and missed sunset at Tunnel View. Maybe we should have. But Tunnel View was nice also.
Tony and I set up our tents in Camp 4 in the snow and dark, then were up early Saturday morning for a foggy sunrise. The fog cleared and we had a gorgeous morning photographing in the Valley, then headed down 140 into the Merced River Canyon, but the light was in the opposite direction that it’d been in when we were driving in the evening before, so everything was all wrong. Early afternoon found us back in the Valley and everything clouded in; we didn’t see the sun again until Sunday morning when we left Yosemite and headed west.
As much as I’m coming to love Yosemite, I think the best parts of this trip might have been outside of the park. Certainly Sunday was amazing! By accidental good fortune only, we met up with Dave and Char Hoffman at the trailhead for Hite Cove Trail not far outside the park. Neither Tony or I had been there, but we’d heard good things. And amazing it was! The trail runs midway up the side of a very steep river canyon, parts of which were absolutely covered in California Poppies! The sun came out, the poppies opened up, and there were even some big, poofy white clouds! My favorite photos from the weekend were from the drive out!
After an oh-too-short hike with Dave and Char, we headed to Mariposa for a fabulous lunch at the Sugar Pine Cafe, and then stopped every five minutes on the drive out—photographing the rolling green hills, horses, cows, barns, perfectly crowned trees… and an almond tree grove, where the trip was capped off by a very sarcastic farmer across the road yelling out at me, “Oh my god, take a picture!!” when I stopped to do just that. Apparently, I wasn’t the first person to have that idea!
And from there we got safely home, with no more cars being damaged in the making of this film these photos. Two weeks later and my car is still in Los Angeles, being fixed!
Snow at Mount Laguna!
Twice so far this winter we’d made it up to Mount Laguna, an hour east of our house in San Diego, for sledding with the girls when winter storms had temporarily brought snow… and on Monday of this week the forecast was for a strong winter storm bringing the snow level down to 2,500′ and 8–10 inches of snow up at Julian and Mount Laguna. It rained really hard at the coast Monday evening and even briefly hailed. So I got all my gear together Monday night and dragged myself out of bed 90 minutes before sunrise Tuesday in the hopes that the roads were passable up to Mount Laguna.
As the sky lightened and I passed Alpine, going up in elevation, even the freeway got a bit sketchy. Sudden changes in direction or acceleration might not have been a good idea! Off the freeway at Sunrise Highway, I put on my snow chains and headed up the side of the mountain. Roads had been plowed, but were still almost completely snow and ice covered. Driving was passable… except when I would see a shot and slam on my brakes… after which I would prove that anti-lock brakes with snow chains on makes for a really interesting skidding experience, even when you were only going 20–25 MPH! I made sure not to brake hard for any photos in curves or near drop-offs!
It continued to snow off-and-on through most of the morning, with low clouds enveloping the mountain. There wasn’t as much snow on the trees as one might have hoped because the winds had been gusting to 80 MPH overnight, but many had a light coat of something resembling ice—which would light up just beautifully when there was a break in the clouds and the sun hit the trees. I worked back and forth along the road before and after Mount Laguna, sometimes briefly parking on the road while jumping out to get a shot, other times managing to park my car mostly off the road while I tromped through snowy fields. Other than the Border Patrol and San Diego Sheriffs, I was the only one up there that early.
By mid-morning, the clouds east over the Anza-Borrego Desert had dissipated and the view from snowy mountain down into dry desert was spectacular!
Late morning the light had gone yucky and the clouds hadn’t broken up into anything pretty, so back down the mountain I went with frozen toes and snow chains rattling on the now mostly bare pavement.
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Yosemite: Winter Storm
I made two trips to Yosemite in January, the first for the full moon rising at sunset and the second to try to be in the valley during and just after a winter storm. The storm took its sweet time arriving on the second trip, so I ended up spending six days in Yosemite that trip… which was a whole lot of cold, cold nights in a tent in Camp 4! And a second storm followed the day after I left, so I really wish I could have stayed longer!
The storm hit with a vengeance on Friday. I spent the day Friday photographing low clouds shrouding the granite valley walls, during sporadic rains… and by evening it was POURING. I went to a Ranger presentation at Yosemite Lodge, then around 8 or 9 PM I headed back to Camp 4 for the night. That the path from the parking lot into the campground was more lake than path was a bad sign… and when I got to my campsite I found my tent in the middle of a river! In fact, most of Camp 4 was either river or lake, with only a few high spots. Fortunately, the river was only 3–4 inches deep, and the waterproofing on the bottom of my tent was 6–8 inches. The inside of the tent was dry! The only other guy camping in Camp 4 that night helped me pick my tent up and carry it to one of the few high spots, where I spent a nearly sleepless night listening to the monsoon that went on all night. Many inches of rain fell that night, and I have to admit to having had some concerns of dying in a flash flood overnight!
I dragged my sleepless self out of the tent an hour before sunrise the next morning and headed towards Tunnel View. After the turn at Bridalveil Falls, the rain turned to snow… coming down hard! The valley was almost completely obscured by clouds and falling snow, but a guy from San Francisco and I had fun taking photos of snow and waiting out the sunrise just in case.
As the day progressed, the storm began to break up and great photo opportunities were everywhere. The waterfalls, that had been barely perceptible trickles the day before, now gushed as if we were in the middle of the spring melt. I shot all day, then late afternoon took a break in the Yosemite Lodge to check out my photos… only to discover that somehow, at the very beginning of the day, I had gotten an entire constellation of either water droplets or snowflakes directly on my camera sensor. Every single photo was ruined. I was literally sick to my stomach.
I was so dejected that I nearly didn’t go try to shoot sunset. Reluctantly, I told myself that I was here to shoot, so get up and go shoot. Off I went again to Tunnel View, where there were surprisingly few photographers. Three of us waited it out in the cold, watching the completely clouded over/fogged in valley as the minutes ticked by past sunset. One tiny break in the sky was all we got. The other two packed up to go, but I figured I was there anyway, so I ought to wait it out until well past sunset—just in case. I saw the more experienced of the other two hesitate at his car, and then moments later the sky parted and we were treated to the most amazing view of Yosemite Valley! The other two jumped back out of their cars and set up as quickly as they could. For the next 20 minutes, as the sky darkened, the clouds moved back and forth and showed us varying parts of the valley—in about as perfect of a view as one could hope for.
I shot in ways that minimized the effects of the gigantic constellation of blobs on my sensor (placing them outside areas of greatest interest and not shooting with a small aperture) and was able to recover some of the sunset shots!
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