Fresno Trip - Stage 2 Yosemite - Part I

After breakfast at Cinders, we hit the road south for Yosemite National Park.  Our route took us down to cut across the Sierras by Lake Tahoe, taking a scenic route (why drive interstates when you don’t have to) and spending the night in Stockton for a short drive to Yosemite the following day.  It was one of my few mistakes in preparing for the trip.You see, our original plan was to photograph at Lassen National Park on the way down, but when it became evident that it would be closed (or at least the main road through it closed), we made alternative plans.  In an ideal world, we would have driven down to Mono Lake (Lee Vining), and then cut across the Tioga Road to see and photograph the northern part of Yosemite, which we haven’t seen yet.  That was the plan.  But like the main road through Lassen, the Tioga Road closes every winter once the snows come. The question is - would it stay open long enough for us?  The Yosemite NP website is quite good, and lists the road closure and opening dates for quite a few years back.  Only once had it been open past the date we were going to be potentially driving it, although in recent years the closure date has moved from generally falling in late September to consistently closing in late October or early November.  

So as the weeks approached, I was checking the status of the Tioga Road every few days on the website.  Sure enough, two days before we took off, the website had a warning, “Temporary Road Closure - Tioga Road.”  Nothing more.  November 7th, the same date it had closed in recent years.  So we cut across the Sierra Nevada Mountains much further north at Lake Tahoe.  So imagine my surprise when we pulled up to Yosemite’s west entrance and the sign said Tioga Road - Open.  WTF?  Well apparently the “Temporary Road Closure” was indeed temporary for road repairs.  Why didn’t I check the status of the Tioga Road from the hotel in Klamath Falls?  Well, as it was, this year the Tioga Road closed the weekend after we were there.  I guess we’ll have to check it out on another occasion!

So back to the trip.  We arrived in Yosemite well before noon.  On the way there, Ann and I discussed what parts of the park we’d like to revisit, and what might we want to focus on photographically.  We were both in agreement that we wanted to focus more on the meadows, and if possible the river.  Well, we didn’t get to the river much, but we did spend time in the meadows!

We started out by scouting locations for the early morning shoot we were hoping to do the next day.  After walking around a few meadows, we decided upon a meadow at the foot of El Capitan that has a lovely view of the Cathedral Spires.  Scouting trip done, we drove down to El Portal, checked into our hotel, and returned to take advantage of the setting afternoon light.  The light was so much different than our last trip (in April/May 2015) that our first couple of locations didn’t give us much.  We finally settled on a meadow with a view of Yosemite Falls, but a bit late as it turned out.

The sun had already left the valley so we made the best of what we could, noting trees of interest and (fortunately) some of the lovely qualities of this meadow.

Fortunate I say, because as you’ll see, we returned here again and again during our stay.  If I was unexpectedly captivated by Half Dome last time we were here, this meadow and Yosemite Falls was the place this time.

That first day started the pattern of working and types of images I would make during this much shorter stay in the park.

All too quickly the sun went down and we called it day. Back to the hotel, have dinner, and get ready for the next morning.

Which was an early one. I’m glad we scouted things out because it was still dark when we walked out into the meadow to get ready. And we wound up waiting quite some time!  Still, Ann and I agree that we'd much rather get there early and wait than to miss  things because we hadn't arrived there soon enough (think back to our Bandon trip when we were leaving just as the photography workshop was arriving - an hour too late!).  

I’d forgotten how late it takes for light to really enter the valley and how different sunrise is at Yosemite compared to, for example, what we experienced at the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. To put it bluntly, there really was nothing worth showing from the early morning landscape images - all the images were pretty bad.

I was however, able to make some photographs of interesting trees. The first with the Cathedral Spires as a backdrop,

…and another with El Capitan in the background as the sun started to add some color to the landscape.

Finally the sun rose enough to make for an interesting broader landscape view.

By that point, we decided we’d done enough at this location (with Ann creating a lovely tree image), and we headed to another site we’d scoped out the previous day.

While walking from the car towards the Merced River, I came across a piece of deadwood I couldn’t pass up.

Although the streaking sun made taking a wider view  of this piece of wood impossible, I was at least able to make something of an interesting detail in nature.

We wound up at a bend in the river that had an incredible view of El Capitan in one direction and of Sentinel Rock in the other.  Unfortunately, the sky was playing havoc on the deep shadows in the valley and getting a strong photograph in either direction was an exercise in frustration.  After giving up on El Capitan, made my way up river and worked  Sentinel Rock hard, frustrated that I couldn’t wade 10 or so feet into the Merced River.  In the end, I gave up on Sentinel Rock as well and focused on one of the few stretches of the river that still had plentiful leaves (as it was, we were there 2-3 weeks too late for the best color). 

Walking back down-river I was examining reflections in the water and realized I had my El Capitan image.

By that point we were wiped and, well, the tourists stared invading the park.  Yes, even in November there were lots of people there.  We headed back to the hotel to relax a bit, have a bite to eat and to get ready for the afternoon.  We explored a bit more, visited the Ansel Adams Gallery and headed back to what was becoming our favorite meadow (at least for this trip).

Indeed, the light was different earlier in the afternoon - this time we knew where we wanted to be and got there in time.  This trip really helped cement the value of revisiting the same location at different times of the day or different times of the year.  It’s only through spending real time at a place do you get a deeper feel for it and start seeing beyond the superficial beauty of a location.

As Ann and I worked our way around the meadow, I made plenty of photographs, but I kept feeling like there was something  that I was missing.  It wasn’t until the very end, in the last glimpses of sunlight, that I realized what it was and made a final image that made me think long and hard when I studied it that night.

I at least knew what I wanted to do the next afternoon.  And since Ann had her preferences for the morning,  we were set for another early morning rise and a late afternoon shoot on our last day at Yosemite.