David and I decided to take advantage of the Glacier Point Road being open this late in the season to photograph the sunrise with Half Dome. I’d recently posted to Google+ a collage I’d made with David’s cast off photographs and trial prints of my giclees. A fellow photographer on Google+, Vincent Goetz, offered his cast off photographs for collage use as well. He decided to be at Glacier Point for sunrise also.
Raven Collage
The three of us were disappointed there wasn’t a cloud in the sky at sunrise so our next stop was Bridalveil Creek on Glacier Point Road. The creek was frozen solid and the temperature was 19 degrees. Even the ravens looked cold. They were walking half squatted as if trying to keep their legs warm.
Boring sunrise.
Raven huddled on a branch.
Breakfast at the Ahwahnee was next on our stop. Vince was driving ahead of us in his truck. In the valley he came to a stop by the chapel so a bobcat could cross the road in front of him. None of us had seen a bobcat in Yosemite before. It was very healthy looking.
Bobcat in the Chapel parking lot.
Our other photography interest was the late afternoon moonrise. We wanted to be in the Tuolumne Meadow/Tioga Pass area. As we left the valley after breakfast, we stopped at Bridalveil Creek along the main road in the valley. David was interested in ice pictures, then we headed for 120. Though it was a sunny day, at 12:30 it was 35 degrees.
Tioga Pass is now open the latest in the season on record, which gives us a chance to explore the area in winter. We stopped at Tenaya Lake which is frozen solid and had lots of people on the ice engaged in various activities. There were ice skaters, ice hockey players, lots of people playing and a few with picnic tables set up on the ice. It was really creepy to stand on the shore and listen to the ice making lots of weird and distressing sounds. You could see the ice move as well. I decided not to walk around on it.
Tenaya Lake.
Around 3pm we stopped at a pull out near the Tioga Pass gate. We had an hour before the moon rise. The wind was bitter cold. We could photograph while we waited or we could drive down to Lee Vining and have a meal. We chose the latter.
Ellery Lake, elevation 9538 ft, taken through the window as we drove by. I really liked the long shadows on the surface of the ice.
Mono Lake was a gorgeous deep dark blue as we dropped down the grade. I wish I’d gotten a picture of the lake….and of the moon rising over it. By the time we’d finished our meal the moon had risen quite a bit. We dashed back up the grade and found a pull out to photograph the moon. It was so cold with a blasting frigid arctic wind.
The colors of the meadow were stunning.
The view behind me, which Vince suggested I turn around and see. It must have been a beautiful sunset at Tenaya Lake and Olmstead Point.
My last picture of the day, and my favorite. Perhaps I was still shivering as I took this through the windscreen. It’s very Bill Neill-ish without even trying, a happy mistake.
