High Sierra Topix

I was being a responsible person and not parking in the middle of Rock Creek Road Friday like everyone else...I got stuck. :retard: But snow melted a bit and softened up...got out a few hours later. It was beautiful...a few trees with color but still a lot of green and some of the small aspens have lost their leaves. Some of the campgrounds have closed.

hikerchick395 wrote:I was being a responsible person and not parking in the middle of Rock Creek Road Friday like everyone else...I got stuck. :retard: But snow melted a bit and softened up...got out a few hours later. It was beautiful...a few trees with color but still a lot of green and some of the small aspens have lost their leaves. Some of the campgrounds have closed.

Glad you got out!

Well, made another trip up Bishop Creek today...

The North Lake Road is OK...messy, with a bit of snow and ice still on the road. A few spots of color. A lot that had color last week have lost their leaves.

Lake Sabrina is definately less colorful than last week. As is South Lake. But a lot of green trees left.

Along the roadsides, many trees seem to be going brown without much color. Still a lot of green...that may be the only hope. Looks to be duller hues than last year.

(Yesterday was the dreaded "white" sky...today clear, but too breezy. Warmer, though.)

I took a quick trip to the east side this past weekend. I camped near Sonora Pass on Saturday night, then road-tripped down as far as Convict Lake on Sunday. There was a mix of conditions ranging from what I'd consider pre-peak, to peak, to past-peak.

Unfortunately most of my photos were taken in mid-day harsh light. But here are a few shots anyway to give you all a sense for the conditions.

The last few years seem to have provided relatively mediocre fall leaf conditions versus better years earlier last decade. I made one road trip earlier this fall after the one big snow storm in early October, mainly because I was committed to a fishing trip then with a couple other people. I ended up just doing a quick conditions check morning highway tour across SR120 and SR108 without taking my camera out.

Then after that we've had monotonous sunny weather on every following weekend that I chose not to bother with. At this late date the choices have been reduced to western slope Pacific dogwood, bigleaf maple, black cottonwood, black oak, and various smaller perrenial bushes. Those species tend to live in forest understories so photographing them during the day to make the road trip effort worthwhile requires diffuse cloud lighting. This weekend the central Sierra forecast on both days is finally predicting cloudy conditions and potential breezy periods. Light snows are forecast above 3500 feet on Friday that could add some interest.