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Half Dome Emerges Through The Mist

After not coming away with the "breaking storm" shot I was hoping for on January 12, I set off for Yosemite again last Friday with fellow die hard landscape photographer Eric Gail. While most sane Californians were making their way home from work on flooded freeways to sit and recover from their ordeal with warm cups of mocha, Eric and I went bouncing down the Santa Monica Freeway in hopes of snagging a sunset on our way up to Yosemite. (You can probably see where this is going.) When we hit Malibu we lost 90 minutes sitting in traffic as PCH was closed due to flooding and mudslides. After shooting what was left of the sunset at Leo Carrillo, we headed North on PCH, crossed over on the 126 and took the 5/99 up to Yosemite.

 

During the next 12 hours or so we dealt with more rain and snow, tire cables that self destructed, unplowed roads, (my manly man Prius tends to have issues with pushing trough more than 8 inches of snow on the road), and all kinds of craziness at the tunnel on Saturday as dozens of cars, motor homes and busses tried to squeeze into the half plowed parking lots to get shots of the snow.

 

Long story short, my tire cable completely fell off, but the storm finally broke around 10 AM giving us some great shooting conditions in fairly heavy snow throughout the park. This was taken shortly before we headed out as the next wave of storms was coming in. After a full day of shooting various locations throughout the park, we headed up to the tunnel for one last look and to brave the crowds. We were just about to leave as I glanced back and saw Half Dome beginning to emerge from behind the clouds. I pulled over, grabbed the 80-400 lens and spent the last 1/2 hour of our time up there shooting the valley until the sun sank again behind the clouds. Even though the last two trips to Yosemite were a huge pain in terms of road conditions and generally freezing my butt off, I would definitely do it all again tomorrow. The park can sometimes look pretty dead during the Winter months, but freshly falling snow just takes the Yosemite experience to an entirely different level.

 

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Uploaded on January 26, 2017
Taken on January 21, 2017