Tioga Pass Resort is one of those great California places.

At least, it used to be in the winter.  Each year we eagerly await to see if it will be open and each year we’re met with disappointment.  For some not-too-clear reason the lodge has been closed for the last several years in the winter (though it remains a popular summer resort).

Its location on the Eastern entrance to Yosemite gives it great access to the Yosemite high country which is otherwise a little difficult to reach in the winter (the ski in to the lodge is about 7 miles up hill which would be a pretty good day with full backpacks).

This photo was taken during one of our visits, on our last day of that stay.  Jim, Jimbo and I climbed up one of the faces above Ellery Lake for one last bowl run before heading out Tioga Pass road.

I framed this up with my Olympus D40 point and shoot camera with Jim along the edge of the frame and waited for Jimbo to get a little distance between us.  The point and shoot suffered from shutter lag like all digital cameras of that era so I wasn’t able to time the shot precisely but I like the results.

I’m happy with the progress that digital cameras have made in the last 5 years but I’m also amazed at the quality some of these earlier cameras were able to achieve.  Really the best improvements to the cameras in that time have been around usability and reliability more than image quality – though that being said, newer cameras do have amazing resolution and low-light capabilities.

But really, it’s about getting out there and being in the mountains more than it is about the camera.

This is the time of year to be in the mountains.

Back in 2006 a few of us took a roadtrip out to Idaho to do some backcountry skiing in the mountains outside of Ketchum.

For a trip like this I brought along my digital SLR for sure, and at that time it was my Nikon D70 – from the humidity of Vietnam to the cold of the Idaho mountains, this camera proved to me that a digital camera was up to the task of capturing the images I was interested in taking.  In this case, this included action shots of friends enjoying the great snow.

This year we reserved some backcountry yurts which are a great way to get into the remote slopes without having to lug in camping gear (but of course we instead lugged in some deluxe food and drink).  One of the really cool features of these yurts are the wood-fired saunas that they also have on site.

This image is of Mandy having a blast cruising down a powdery slope on our 2nd day in the woods.  I skied down before the crowd, stopping halfway down the slope and setting up my shooting position.

Kneeling in the snow I set the camera to f/5 providing a deep enough aperture to allow for a little play in the focal range (so I could be off by a little as I tracked the moving target) while also allowing enough light to completely freeze the action with a shutter speed of 1/6400.

As usual with shots like these, I fired a few while Mandy was above me and a few below, but the really fun shots are right as the subject passes by – when you can get the vistas in the background, the snow spraying away and ideally, a turn as they move to avoid the photographer.

Boy it’s time to get back to the snow!

In 2006 Meghan and I made a long weekend trip to Colorado to see the fall.  As I’ve said before, here in San Francisco we don’t get great fall foliage so October trips can be a good way to experience fall for a quick weekend.

This year though we were a little late.  The colors were mostly gone from the hillsides and during our trip we were treated to a pretty big snow storm.

I took this photo along the Yampa River in Steamboat Springs – one of the towns where we hung out this trip.  I like the rather stark feeling of this shot – which is pretty colorless except for the band of shrubs cutting across the frame.  This was a pretty typical sight for us, as the skies were grey with clouds and weather and the ground was dusted with snow – obliterating most of the colors from the scenes.

For this shot, I left it pretty much as I shot it, though I cropped the bottom just a tad to square up the image just slightly.

This photograph is from a Yosemite backpacking trip back in 2001.  This was my big break from work during which I took several trips both international and throughout the US.  One of those domestic trips was a ‘family’ backpacking trip in Yosemite with Karl’s family and a few stragglers (including me).

I took this picture of Cindy, sitting along the ridge of Yosemite Valley, just around the corner from Yosemite Falls.  I was going for a farily typical environmental portrait, placing emphasis on the individual while still providing details of the surrounding area.  In this case, the valley assisted in the set up.  First, the sheer distance between the subject and the valley floor (3000 feet straight down, well over a mile to the trees and mountains in the background) provides a good separation and easy focus isolation.  Second, the frequent campfires in the valley campgrounds create a hazy distance, which bumps up the relative clarity of the near subject.

This picture would have been taken with my Contax camera (I’m fairly certain) though it could also have been one of my earlier Nikons.  I most likely would have been shooting a Kodak color negative film.  My negs and slides are in deep storage now so I can’t know for sure without digging.  It was printed at Photoworks though and then the print was scanned back in on a Canon flatbed scanner – that was how I did things back then.  That I know because of the ’sloppy’ full borders around the image.

In the fall of 2001 I tried in vain to get a reservation for the Pear Lake Ski Hut in Sequoia National Park.  It turns out to be a very popular hut to reserve (evidenced by the fact that I’ve yet to be able to secure the hut for another weekend).

In late December I called to see if any changes had occurred in the availability of the hut – and I was in luck.  There was a cancellation for the first weekend in January.

A group of us made the trek out to the Sequoia Kings Canyon Park where we started our ski.  The hut was wonderful and the skiing fantastic.

This photo was taken with my Mamiya 35mm camera while out skiing runs on a bright sunny Saturday.  The weather was perfect and the snow conditions were great.  It’s always a challenge to decide whether to take the big SLR on trips like these.  The weight is really a pain but the photos are usually worth it.

In this image, I like the contrast of the silhouetted skiers up on the horizon, the wispy clouds behind them and the sun illuminating the single patch of snow up by the horizon.  To me this photo really captures the uphill part of a backcountry ski trip – the long slogs up the mountain required to enjoy the awesome downhills.

Since this trip I’ve gotten a lot better at taking the ‘action’ downhill shots – and I’ve had opportunities to shoot those photos on a few good trips.  But on this trip, I felt like I really captured the switch-backing uphills.

It’s that time of year again, and I’m looking forward to more weekends of fun in the snow.

This photograph is from a backpacking trip that I took during the Labor Day break in 2005.  Jim, Mandy, Diane and I head up to the Eastern side of the Sierra, just outside of Bishop for a few days in the high mountains.

The trip started with a pretty good drive up to the trail head and from there we continued to hike up and over a pass (at just about 12,000 feet) which got us into this large basin surrounded by beautiful Sierra peaks.  We spent a few days wandering around the basin and then Mandy, Diane and I head back to the cars while Jim took off for the first leg of his High Sierra traverse.

This image was taken in the morning, well after sunrise but early enough that there are still some shadows across the landscape.  I used my Nikon digital D70 SLR with a standard zoom lens.  One of the beauties of long focal length photos is that you don’t need a big professional lens to capture the image.  Most lenses will do a nice job at f/11 or f/16 – and this was taken at f/9 which falls well within the lens’ ability to capture a sharp image.  This meant that I could take a smaller lens, which is always appreciated on these trips up to the mountains.

I like the composition of this image, with the rock in the foreground creating a strong anchor and really emphasising the distance captured in the frame.  The lake and grass in the midground allow the eye to follow up to the mountains in the distance with their shrinking glaciers at their feet.  The shadows cutting across the mountains help define the peaks and valleys in the mountain faces.

This was a beautiful place to hike, much like the rest of the Eastern Sierra trips that I’ve taken, and I hope to get back here one day soon.

For more images from this trip, you can visit the Backpacking the Eastern Sierra pages, and for more Sierra Nevada vistas, just click on the Sierra Nevada keyword found with any of the relevant photos.

As an aside, I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus from the weekly photo entries during the summer as I’ve recouped from my Africa trip and spent time updating other aspects of the website.  As is always the case, I haven’t gotten around to updating everything that I wanted, but hopefully I’ll be able to kep up with the weekly postings a little better..