Yosemite Valley, March 2012

(Remember to click on a picture to enlarge and then click "back" to get back. If you click again, the picture gets even bigger. I apologize in advance for the number of photos – taking pictures in Yosemite in the springtime is like shooting fish in a teacup. You can't miss.)

We have always avoided Yosemite Valley; to quote Yogi Berra, "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded." But we figured that in early March, when the weather is cold and there are no major holidays, we would take a chance. We are very glad that we did: the park was virtually empty, the falls were flowing fairly well, and the campground was quiet.

Sunday, March 4: The drive to Yosemite was a pleasant surprise – we had remembered it as an endless ordeal, but it only took seven and half hours, even while pulling the trailer. We were greeted with the usual spectacular view as we came into the Valley, which provided a perfect backdrop for the obligatory portrait of our new trailer:



After getting situated in Upper Pines Campground, we took a late evening walk to the bottom of Lower Yosemite Falls. The moon was almost full – this was a 30 second exposure at f 3.5, with an ISO of 800:



Monday, March 5: We hiked up to Nevada Falls, a fairly ambitious hike (especially because the shorter Mist Trail route, via Vernal Falls, was closed, supposedly because of ice). As it turned out, though, the longer "winter" route was quite icy; our microspikes came in very handy. Many people turned around because of the difficult conditions. We "boulder hopped" (carefully) to the base of the falls, which were thunderous -- there was no one else around:



These falls are 600 feet high – in this video clip, the "snowcone" of frozen spray can be seen at the base of the falls:



(The falls were so loud that the noise overwhelmed the microphone on the camera -- hence the odd audio.) We then hiked back down to the top of Vernal Falls, expecting that we would have to slowly and carefully retrace our steps over the icy portion of the trail. At the falls, we met a family with young children and asked them how they had managed the ice. They responded, "What ice?" It turns out that they had used the Mist Trail route and that there was no ice at all. We happily took that shortcut down the hill, and we were very glad that we did. Otherwise, we would have missed the vivid rainbow at the base of the falls -- this picture might be worth double-clicking:



After some experimentation, I discovered that my polarizing filter intensifies the colors of the rainbow. This was a half-second exposure at f 27, with an ISO of 200. Unfortunately, no photo can show the mesmerizing pulsation of the rainbow: the colors seemed to wave rhythmically, as the water surged over the falls. It looked as though the colors were springing directly out of the dark rocks, into the sunlight.

(This is an edit, added in late 2013 -- after learning how to use Lightroom, I went back and fiddled around with the preceding picture, hoping to get a slightly more realistic tone to the water and the rock.  The shot was taken in the late afternoon during "golden hour."  Even though the original was a jpeg, rather than a "raw" file, and even though I could not change the white balance, I was able to tweak the settings to achieve something close to the desired result, below.)

On our way back down to the Valley, we were entertained by a pack of almost-tame mule deer grazing by the side of the trail:



Tuesday, March 6: As predicted, there were snow showers all day long, which interfered with the views. Nevertheless, we managed to have fun – we spent most of the day hiking around the meadows in Yosemite Valley:



Later in the day, Half Dome peeked through the clouds:



Wednesday, March 7: The night had been very cold and windy (although we were perfectly comfortable in the trailer – hurrah for insulation!). When we emerged, we were greeted by our neighbor, a small young Chinese lady, who was carrying bags of food. She asked us if we wanted any of it, because she was leaving unexpectedly. We asked her why she was leaving; she told us that she had spent the entire night shivering in her tent as a bear walked around and around, sniffing and growling. Apparently, she had not washed out her cooking pan and had stored it inside her tent, and the bear reached in and grabbed it! We asked her how she knew it was a bear. She told us that she could see its shadow in the moonlight on the walls of her tent: "I was prepared to die!" she announced.

After she hurriedly packed up and left, we opened our mysterious care packages to discover that she had left us (among other things) an enormous coconut cream pie and a huge pomelo, which is similar to a grapefruit (but much more fibrous, as we later discovered):



We then embarked upon our most ambitious hike of the week, from the valley floor to the top of Yosemite Falls, a round-trip of almost 8 miles with a vertical gain of over 2700 feet. This hike was strenuous, but not quite a death march. In the heat of the summer, though, this would be a very difficult hike. Shortly after passing Columbia Point, we were greeted with our first full view of the upper falls:



Note the patches of snow on the walls of the canyon – during the very cold and windy night, the falling spray had frozen in midair and had adhered to the rock. As we were hiking up the trail, and as the sun hit the patches of ice, they would suddenly crack off and tumble down the mountain, sounding exactly like nearby lightning and thunder (or, worse yet, a rockfall), echoing through the canyon. The frozen spray also formed a huge snow cone at the base of the falls:



The upper falls are over 1400 feet high – in this clip, we followed the water from the top all the way down to the snow cone:



From the upper portion of the trail, we could see that Half Dome had been sprinkled with fresh snow:



It took four hours to get to the top (with frequent stops). The viewing area at the edge of the cliff was covered in ice; but Felice conquered her vertigo and was (rightfully) rather proud of herself:





On our way back down (which took another three hours), we stared up at the shadowy sheer cliffs hanging over our heads, rising more than 1000 feet straight up from the trail. One hopes that no rocks will fall:



By the time we were nearing the bottom, the setting sun had begun to inflame Half Dome:



Later that evening, we decided to head back out to the meadow near Yosemite Falls to watch the moon rise over Half Dome. That's Mars in the upper left-hand corner of the picture – this is a 20 second exposure at f 5.6 with an ISO of 200:



Thursday, March 8: We drove up to Badger Pass for a snowshoe hike to Dewey Point, a round-trip of over 6 miles on a trail that heads north from Glacier Point Road. The snow depth varied widely, from none to about two feet:



At times, we decided to carry our snowshoes and hike, rather than shuffling along slowly – this meant that I was sometimes loaded up like a pack mule:



At the end of the day, we took a short walk to Bridal Veil Falls. The swirling wind was whipping the water from side to side:



The snow and frozen spray contrasted sharply with the orange rocks at the base of the falls:



Friday, March 9: We took a walk around Mirror Lake. The most interesting part was the Ahwiyah Point Rockslide, a huge debris field resulting from exfoliation of an 1800 foot granite cliff face on the north side of Half Dome. This slide, which took place in March of 2009, was so cataclysmic that it registered as an earthquake with a magnitude of 2.4. Surprisingly, the talus was not composed exclusively of huge boulders, as one might expect; apparently, the failure of the mountain was so violent that much of the rock shattered during the fall and on impact, creating a mess of sand, gravel, and boulders:



The source of the slide can be seen at the very top of this picture, far above the trail:



Although we are not sure, it seemed that a couple of very large boulders high on the cliff were dislodged by "frost wedging," in which the freezing and thawing of water in the cracks between the rocks during the springtime will eventually pry the rocks apart. We could see huge "sockets" of raw unweathered rock at the top of the cliff, where the boulders had broken away. From there, I would guess that the boulders dislodged other precariously-perched rocks, and the slide was underway.

Late that evening, we decided to pay another moonlight visit to Lower Yosemite Falls. We were all alone at the base of the falls, a rare privilege. We had heard that there might be a "moonbow" during the full moon, but we couldn't see one when we arrived. I decided to take a time exposure of the falls, mostly because the "rooster tail" at the bottom was so prominent. After the camera processed the image, we were shocked to see the elusive moonbow:



This is the same shot edited in Lightroom, more than a year later:

After the camera had revealed the moonbow to us, we were able to see a white streak in the air, but we still couldn't see the colors ourselves. It turns out that since the moon reflects the light of the sun, moonlight contains all of the colors in sunlight. It's just much fainter. Here is a closer view of the rooster tail and the moonbow:



As we left the falls, we were able to see both the upper and lower falls at the same time:



(All of these shots were at 30 seconds with an ISO of 800.)

This is the same shot, cropped and edited in Lightroom about a year later:

Saturday, March 10: We packed up and headed home; but first we stopped off at Mariposa Grove for a short hike among the sequoias. Since this was a Saturday, the grove was fairly busy. We had heard that this was a terrific sequoia grove, but (frankly) the groves at Sequoia National Park are much larger and denser. We ended the trip with the usual mandatory sequoia shots. The first picture is the entire tree, with Felice at the base. If you enlarge the picture, you can see her at the bottom. The second picture is an excerpt for perspective, so that you can actually see her:

Three Rivers, January 2012

Just before the start of the Spring semester, we managed to squeeze in several days of camping at Potwisha Campground, at the south end of Sequoia National Park. This was the maiden voyage of the new LMIC – it's very similar to our original LMIC, except that it has much more ground clearance and larger holding tanks:



We had wanted to camp up at Lodgepole, at 6500 feet, but the park service closed the campground during the winter. Nevertheless, we were pleasantly surprised by Potwisha Campground, a few miles east of Three Rivers. For much of the year, this area is too hot for us, because it is at roughly 3000 feet. But during the winter, it is cool during the day and cold at night. There are large oak trees throughout the campground, providing lots of shade. During the week, the campground was very quiet. (As one might expect, it was not so quiet on Friday and Saturday night.)

Wednesday, January 11: We took advantage of the cool weather to hike in the South Fork area near Three Rivers, an area that is usually too hot for hiking. We took the Garfield Grove trail. Although we eventually arrived at the grove, the trail was very steep, very long, with lots of poison oak (which fortunately didn't affect us). We probably won't take this trail again – it wasn't worth the tremendous expenditure of time and effort.

That night, the moon rose over the Great Western Divide, screened by some high clouds. (Remember to click on a picture to enlarge, and click back to get back. And you can double-click for a really big image.)



Thursday, January 12: We took advantage of the absence of snow and headed up toward the Giant Forest area. There was a huge construction project on Highway 198 leading to the park, which was inconvenient (but which held down the crowds substantially). On the way up, we had to wait for a while before passing through the construction zone – we stopped right below Moro Rock:



We took the High Sierra Trail from Crescent Meadow to roughly Panther Creek. There were quite a few old-growth sequoias on the trail from Crescent Meadow up toward the ridge:



There were wonderful views of the Great Western Divide; in a year with normal snowfall, we would never have been able to get out to this area (even on snowshoes) because of the avalanche danger:



Although the trail skirted along the edge of a cliff, it was very well graded -- good footing, with not a lot of climbing and dropping. Surprisingly, there was quite a bit of "bear scat" – the Ranger later told us that the bears had been restless due to the warm weather and the lack of snow. Late in the day, the shadows highlighted the ridges of the Kaweah Peaks:



That night was windy, cold, and clear –- we could see the Orion Constellation rising over the mountains. (For folks who like technical information about photographs, this was taken at an ISO of 3200 for 30 seconds.) I think that if you click on the picture and enlarge it, you will be able to see that some of the stars are bluish and some are reddish – these are their true colors, which are revealed by the long exposure:


Ten years later, I tried to rework that photo to correct the color balance -- let's see if there is much of a difference:

Yes -- that is a little more true to life.

Friday, January 13: We again headed up toward the Giant Forest area near the Gen. Sherman Tree. This area is usually very crowded but was almost empty due to the construction project, which discouraged many of the tourists. We took a six mile hike on the Trail of the Sequoias and saw only two other couples in six hours.

This is probably the best grove of old-growth sequoias we have ever seen – hundreds (if not thousands) of huge trees in an open forest. Looking up at the trees, it is hard to grasp their size. But the fallen trees are sometimes even more astonishing –- look carefully, and you can see that Felice is standing at the base of this root ball:



The weather was cool and dry; we stretched out on the soft forest floor inside the Senate Group and looked up at the circle of trees in the late afternoon light. The forest was absolutely silent and empty:



Saturday, January 14: In the morning, the National Park folks opened the highway unexpectedly, so we took advantage of this opportunity and hiked up to the crest of Little Baldy at 8000 feet, with terrific 360° views of the Silliman Crest and the Great Western Divide:



We had it all to ourselves for the first half-hour on top of the dome – it was exhilarating to see all of the areas of the park that we had hiked over the last several years -- Big Baldy to the northwest, Buck Rock to the north, Mitchell Peak to the northeast, Tokopah Valley to the east, Panther Gap to the southeast, and Moro Rock to the south.

In the afternoon, we hiked a portion of the Wuksachi trail, encountering quite a bit of ice. It was clear that in a season of high water, there would be several difficult stream crossings on this trail.

Aspens and Snow: Bishop Creek, October 2011

(Remember to click on the pictures to enlarge, and then click back to get back.)

We had planned a brief trip up to the Bishop Creek area to see the fall color – but a few days before we were to leave, a surprise snowstorm dumped a couple of feet of snow on the Sierra. As usual, we decided to push on despite the snow, and we were very glad that we did.

October 7:

The drive northward on Highway 395 was spectacular – this is Mt. Whitney peeking out from behind some clouds:




In the mid-afternoon, we found a quiet campsite in the Big Trees Campground (right on the creek at 7500 feet). The aspens in this area were still mostly green at that time, with little frost or snow damage to the leaves. We unhitched and took the Canyonero up to North Lake. The road was a little tricky – very twisty and narrow, full of snow, slush, and ice, with a thousand foot cliff on one side of the road. (No problem, really.) But we were surprised at how much storm damage the aspens had suffered up at the lake – some trees were bare, while many others were covered in black or brown leaves. Normally, the reflection in the lake at this time of year is brilliant; this year, it was muted and more subtle:


This is almost the same shot, edited in Lightroom:

Fortunately, Felice found a few colorful leaves that had fallen into the snow:



We drove back down toward Lake Sabrina (rhymes with "Carolina") at sunset – this is a view toward the Ancient Bristlecone Forest in the White Mountains, east of Bishop:


This is almost the same shot, edited in Lightroom:

Bundled up against the cold, we watched the sunset from the dam at Lake Sabrina:


This is almost the same shot, edited in Lightroom:

October 8:

We hiked up to Blue Lake along the east shore of Lake Sabrina. The creeks had begun to thaw after the storm:



Felice took a shot of the thick icicles forming in the shadows:



There was quite a bit of wet snow on the trail – we were grateful for our knee-high waterproof gaiters and our hiking poles equipped with big "powder baskets:"



From time to time, the trail broke out of the trees and we could see the Owens Valley far below:



Along the trail, the normally rough fields of dark granite boulders were softened by a layer of whipped cream:



It was exhilarating to be in the backcountry after a snowstorm – usually, this terrain would be unreachable:



Up at Blue Lake, we caught a reflection of Mt. Thompson and its glacier fields:



October 9: As we drove up to South Lake, we noticed that the aspens along the south fork of the creek had begun to change and had not suffered too much storm damage:




We slogged up to Treasure Lakes (above South Lake), through deep wet snow. There were several water crossings; although there were some bridges, the bridges were covered in snow, and it was a little tricky to cross the streams. Judging by the footprints on the trail, only one other hiker had previously reached the lakes after the storm, and he had encountered some difficulty in finding the trail. So we had to do a little bit of independent navigation from time to time, which added to the sense of mild adventure:



Mt. Johnson loomed over the lake:





Here is a quick video panorama of Treasure Lakes:



That evening, we proposed a farewell toast to the original LMIC; this was our last trip in it, since we have purchased a new one. From the way that Felice is bundled up, you can tell that it was a cold night -- after dinner, we grab our blankets and our books and our snacks:

.

October 10:

After the strenuous hike to Treasure Lake, Felice's shins were a little sore from her snow boots, so we decided to hike below snow line in more comfortable boots; also, it looked like rain. (As we later discovered, it snowed in the higher elevations that day.) We drove north, up to Convict Lake, which is worth seeing once. The lake itself was nothing special, but the geology of the surrounding mountains was really amazing – waves of metamorphic rock tortured by the intrusion of the Sierra granite:



We were hoping to head up toward Mildred Lake, but the signage was poor, the chaparral was dull, and we decided not to push on. Instead, we hiked back around the lake. Felice reacted quickly when we ran across this torpid late-season snake:



We then headed south to McGee Creek. Ordinarily, McGee is a hot and sunny trail; but on a cold, cloudy, breezy day, this was a surprisingly delightful hike. A couple of miles from the trailhead, the aspens were almost at peak color:


This is almost the same shot, edited in Lightroom:

Someone we met told us that the red aspens were genetically different from the yellow or gold trees – I don't know if that's true, but the red specimens were rare and spectacular, especially against the backdrop of snow and rock:




Even though we got a late start, we covered a lot of ground, with plenty of time to get to the beaver pond, three miles from the trailhead. The beavers had built a substantial dam, and their snow-covered lodge was framed by the aspens reflected in the water:




The McGee Creek area is very enticing – someday, we will get an earlier start and will explore the further reaches of the canyon. On the way back down, we got a good view of the up-tilted metamorphic formations in the John Muir Wilderness – if you look carefully at this picture (and perhaps enlarge it), you can see that the vertical ridges are really sedimentary layers that have been compressed into marble and other metamorphic rock; they have then been tilted 90° from horizontal to vertical, and the more-resistant layers now stick up above the softer, more easily eroded layers sandwiched between them:



Late that afternoon, we stopped so that Felice could take my picture near my very favorite road sign:



Just after sunset, we noticed that Mt. Morgan was creating a "banner cloud," as it disturbed and condensed the flow of moist cold air over the peak. This picture was taken with a 20 second exposure at f38, using a neutral density filter:



October 11: We headed back to South Lake for a hike to Long Lake and Spearhead Lake. The colors in the canyon below South Lake had really intensified:



The trail to Long Lake was pretty icy in the morning, since there had been several days of melting and re-freezing. We were very grateful for our microspikes – you can see them under Felice's boots in this shot at Long Lake, with Bishop Pass in the background:



It felt like quite an accomplishment to trudge through the deep wet slushy snow – imagine walking through miles of knee-deep mashed potatoes and gravy! You can see Mt. Goode and its glaciers behind us:




Incredibly, we encountered a frog hopping across snowfield -- he needed a little directorial assistance:



Before we left, we took a quick panorama video of Long Lake:



On our way down the hill, we noticed an "erratic." The big gray boulder perched atop the reddish cliff had been carried down by a glacier from the granite cliffs surrounding the lakes and then had settled on top of the rusty iron-bearing rock when the glacier finally melted -- this picture might be worth a click, so that you can see that these are two totally different kinds of rock:



(The French term for these odd rocks is "roche moutonee," or "sheep rocks" -- the French farmers thought that that the big rounded rocks in their fields looked like lost sheep. The glaciologist Louis Agassiz realized that the anomalous rocks must have been carried down into the meadows by ancient glaciers.)

The snow got sloppier and muddier as we hiked back down in the afternoon. The afternoon was so warm that we were able to enjoy cocktails by the creek at our campsite, a treat usually restricted to the summer months:



That evening, we watched the full moon come up over the mountains at Lake Sabrina:



I took a 30 second moonlit exposure of the mountains surrounding the lake -- this one might be worth clicking on:


This is almost the same shot, edited in Lightroom: