In the winter and spring of 1994 I spent every spare moment following and photographing a group of coyotes who lived in the center of Yosemite Valley. Here’s the story behind this photograph of the coyote I called Ben.

It was snowing heavily when I picked my son Kevin up from preschool. Returning home I had to park the car at the top of the unplowed driveway or risk getting stuck. As we walked down the hill through the deepening snow I spotted fresh tracks: two coyotes had passed by. I knew they had to be members of a pack I had been following and photographing, as their territory included our house behind The Ansel Adams Gallery. I handed Kevin to his mom, grabbed my camera, 300 mm lens, and tripod, and set out to follow the trail.

The tracks wound through Yosemite Village and then out toward Cook’s Meadow. I knew the coyotes could appear at any moment, so I was ready, with the camera mounted on the tripod, covered in a plastic bag, and slung over my shoulder. The trail led me to Sentinel Bridge, and just beyond that I spotted a coyote curled up on top of a log. I recognized him: it was a male I called Ben.

I had already been photographing these coyotes for two months. Like many animals in Yosemite Valley they were used to people and mostly ignored me as I trailed them. It was challenging at first to tell them apart. Both sexes, I learned, sometimes lifted their hind legs when peeing, but males stretched the leg out and backward, females out and forward. It makes sense if you think about it. Also, a good look from behind revealed the male’s fuzzy testicles.

There were four members of the pack: two males and two females. The two males often hung out together, and it became clear that one was dominant. In my mind I started referring to them as the alpha male and beta male, but soon realized they needed better names. I kept thinking, “Beta male, beta, what would be a good name for him… Ben!” It seemed to fit. And if he was Ben, then his buddy had to be Jerry. Yes, like Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Faye, the alpha female, got her name simply because it started with the same letter as “female.” I know, not very imaginative. The other female seemed to be barely tolerated by the rest of the group, so she didn’t really qualify as the beta female, just someone who hung around the periphery. I called her Polly for no reason—it just seemed to fit.

The next time I saw Jerry, about a week later, he had developed a limp. I worried about his survival, and wondered whether Ben would take advantage of the injury to assume the alpha position. But he didn’t—he still deferred to Jerry.

A year later Ben, Jerry, Faye, and Polly’s territory shifted further down the valley toward El Capitan. A busy life took me in other directions, so I couldn’t spend every free moment searching for the group, but I saw them occasionally. Jerry still limped slightly, but was otherwise healthy, and maintained his alpha status. Eventually I lost track of these coyotes, but I’m sure their descendants still roam the Sierra.

When I found Ben on that snowy afternoon in February he looked at me, then curled up again in the snow. I slowly, casually moved closer, then waited, checking and re-checking my camera settings. After about fifteen minutes Ben looked around, stood up, shook off the snow, sat down again, and glanced at me for a second—click, click. Then he and Faye, who had been lying out of sight nearby, trotted off.

Bridalveil Fall

It’s still winter in Yosemite Valley. There’s snow on the ground, and the trees are bare with no hint of buds. Nights are cold. The sun still takes a low path through the southern sky, and the waterfalls lie quietly against the cliffs.

But there are subtle signs of the approaching spring. Each day lasts a little longer than the previous one, and sunlight is reaching some spots for the first time in months. Bridalveil Fall, for example, now gets brushed by sunshine in the late afternoon, while in December it saw none. And the volume of water in Bridalveil and the other falls is slowly increasing. Last year the waterfalls dwindled to trickles in late July, and stayed that way through December, with the exception of a few days following a heavy October rain. But now, in February, the snowpack along the Valley’s rim is deep, and the lengthening days prompt some of that snowpack to melt and pour over the falls—not in great volume, but enough to make them real waterfalls again.

None of the major falls in Yosemite Valley completely freeze during the winter, but ice usually forms along their sides every night. During a cold snap that ice may not melt alongside shady Bridalveil for days or weeks, and impressive ice sculptures can develop at its sides and base.

Sunnier Yosemite Falls sheds its ice every day. You can often estimate how cold the previous night was by looking at the amount of ice alongside the Upper Fall in the morning: the more ice, the colder the night. This ice starts melting as soon as the sun hits it. I’ve stood out in Cook’s Meadow many times watching chunks of ice periodically break off and listening to the booms when they hit bottom. All that ice builds up into a large cone at the base of the Upper Fall, clearly visible from the Chapel Meadow. In spring—usually in April—that ice breaks apart, and Yosemite Creek and the Merced River suddenly become filled with ice. This frazil ice, as it’s called, can completely cover the ground below Lower Yosemite fall, making it seem as if a very localized storm dumped a foot or two of slushy snow there and nowhere else.

Rainbow, Upper Yosemite Fall

For photographers, Yosemite Falls presents a dilemma. In spring, when enormous quantities of water pour off its lip, the light on the falls is terrible. It’s in shade before 10 a.m. and after 4 p.m., and in between the sun is high and the light harsh. The winter light is wonderful—shortly after it rises the sun casts a beautiful warm glow on the Upper Fall. But for most of the winter only a trickle of water is visible. Now though, in February, the sunlight reaches Upper Yosemite Fall early in the day, and the increasing snowmelt brings a fair amount of water over its lip. As a bonus, you can often see a rainbow early in the morning from the eastern end of Cook’s Meadow or around Yosemite Village.

In the coming months the days will grow longer, the snow will melt faster, and before long the Valley will be filled with the roar of waterfalls. These spring cataracts are impressive and awe-inspiring, but unapproachable. Getting too close means being soaked or risking a slip and deadly fall into rapids. In winter you can get closer and examine the contours of the fall and surrounding rocks in more detail. Instead of a deafening roar, you hear musical sounds of water lapping and splashing against rocks. There’s a quiet beauty and serenity to these waterfalls in winter that you can’t experience in any other season.

El Capitan reflected in the Merced River, Saturday, January 23rd

Two weeks ago I wrote about heavy, wet snow that broke branches in Yosemite Valley in December of 1996, dropping a limb through our neighbor’s roof. Last week history repeated itself. It snowed off and on from Monday until Thursday, adding about six inches of wet snow to the valley floor by Thursday afternoon, but then the temperature dropped, it snowed through the night, and by Friday morning the snow was 16 inches deep on the valley floor.

All this heavy, wet snow was apparently too much for many trees and limbs. Branches fell on roofs, cars, and across roadways. The Park service had to close all the roads into Yosemite for more than 24 hours because they couldn’t keep up with the tree removal; they would no sooner clear stretch of roadway when another branch would block it. Standing in Cook’s Meadow Friday morning with my workshop group we heard, and often saw, limbs or whole trees falling every few minutes. Many visitors were evacuated from their rooms at Yosemite Lodge, and several cars were crushed by falling limbs, but fortunately no one was injured.

Saturday afternoon the storms finally ended, and we stood across the river from El Capitan watching the mist and clouds swirl across its face and photographing golden reflections in the water. (You can see another image from this evening on my other blog.)

We’ve now entered a stretch of drier weather, but the snowpack dumped by last week’s storms should last for awhile. In winter, many places on the valley floor see no sunshine for several months. The sun takes a low path through the southern sky, leaving many spots in the perpetual shade of tall cliffs, and allowing snow to linger.

Black oaks and low winter sun after a snowstorm

When I worked at The Ansel Adams Gallery in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s I would watch the progression of the winter sun. In early December, looking out the Gallery’s front windows, the sun would rise from the southeast between Half Dome and Glacier Point, then barely skirt the rim of the valley as it moved toward Sentinel Rock. About a week before the winter solstice the sun, nearing its lowest path of the year, would slide briefly behind Glacier Point before reappearing further west near Sentinel Rock. Then about a week after the solstice it would end this disappearing act and stay visible all morning, sliding along just above the valley rim again. The sun’s movement—it’s progression to its lowest path at the solstice, then re-emergence as the days became longer—was a tangible event from this spot.

In winter this area, Yosemite Village, is the sunniest place in the valley, receiving sunlight all day long except for that brief period around the solstice. It’s no coincidence that Native Americans put their main village at this spot. You can still see their acorn grinding holes in a rock along the Gallery’s west side.

The moon will be full tomorrow night. While the sun takes a low, southerly path through the winter sky, the full moon does the opposite: it rises to the northeast, sets to the northwest, and travels a high route through the sky, like the summer sun. The full moon is on the opposite side of the earth from the sun, so while the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun in winter, it’s tilted toward the full moon.

Half Dome and moon reflected in the Merced River

This means that winter is the only time you can see the moon rise to the left (north) of Half Dome from the valley floor. Ansel Adams’ famous Moon and Half Dome image was made on December 28th, 1960. I made this photograph from near the old “Camp 6,” now the day-use parking area, on December 20th, 2007. Like most “moonrise” photographs, including Ansel’s, I captured this a few days before the full moon—actually three days before, as it reached full on the 23rd. Two to four days before it becomes full the moon rises early enough to clear the valley’s rim prior to sunset, making it possible to show the moon with the last rays of sunlight striking Half Dome.

Now, in late January, each day is a little longer than the last. From the Gallery’s front porch the morning sun slides well above the rim of the valley. I’m sure we’ll see more winter storms, but inevitably the days will get longer, and before long we’ll be complaining about the heat.

Ponderosa pines in a snowstorm

It rarely rains in Yosemite in the summer. We often see one sunny day after another for weeks.

In winter the weather gets more interesting. I’m teaching a workshop in Yosemite Valley this week, and it’s been wet. Today brought the fifth storm in four days. We’ve seen four inches of precipitation during that period. Most of it has fallen as snow, but the temperature has been hovering just above freezing, so while the snow accumulates during intense downpours, as soon as the precipitation slows down the snow begins to melt, and the roads and walkways become filled with slush. But away from the roads it looks like a winter wonderland, with tree branches and cliff ledges outlined in white.

The temperature usually drops gradually during most winter storms in California, and it’s always exciting when rain changes to snow. In winter, of course, every raindrop is born as a snowflake; rain is just snow that melted on the way down. When the temperature gets close to freezing, my wife Claudia and I like to look for thick rain—when the snowflakes haven’t completely melted and slushy drops hit your outstretched hand or spatter the windshield. As the temperature drops further snow starts to fall in earnest. There’s a moment when the ground is still bare, but thick, fat flakes fill the air. The biggest flakes fall when the temperature is near freezing and tiny individual flakes are wet enough to stick together and form balls an inch or more in diameter. Driving at night these snowballs fly at you in a mesmerizing stream, a natural kaleidoscope.

The snow itself cools surfaces and soon it starts sticking to trees and bushes, then the ground, then finally pavement. When the trees have only about a half an inch of snow on them each branch becomes delicately outlined, an etching come to life.

If the snow continues it gradually fills the woods and grows deeper in the meadows. There’s a point when you can start to feel it when you’re walking—when your feet have to push some snow out of the way with each step. It’s a pleasant feeling at first, like walking through a cloud. You watch your feet kick out little plumes with each step. But as the snow gets deeper walking becomes difficult, and it’s time to put on skis or snowshoes.

Falling snow is beautiful, but a clearing storm in Yosemite Valley can be magical. As the skies clear,  swirling mist alternately hides and reveals impossibly high cliffs. Spots of sunlight appear and disappear, illuminating first one rock, then another. This sight always leaves me humbled and awestruck no matter how many times I’ve seen it before.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clearing storm, Three Brothers and the Merced River

 

(Note: I’m making two posts this week since I was late getting the first one out.)

Tuesday night it rained in Yosemite Valley and snowed at higher elevations. Next week forecasters are predicting a series of storms with snow levels from 5000 to 6000 feet, so Yosemite Valley, at 4000 feet, will probably see mostly rain.

That’s too bad. I love snow. Growing up in suburban New York and Connecticut I never saw enough of it, but there were a few big blizzards to lend excitement to the otherwise drab winters.

The most memorable storm occurred while we were living in Brewster, New York, in a new development on top of a hill. This must have been the “Lindsay” blizzard of February 8 – 10, 1969, so called because Mayor John Lindsay of New York was blamed for poor snow removal in the city. I would have been ten years old, awaiting my eleventh birthday on February 13th. 20 inches of snow fell officially in the city. On top of our windy hill the snow piled into drifts ten feet high. The wind blew so hard it drove snow through vents and built a drift in our attic. My mother organized the family into a bucket brigade to remove the snow from the attic and melt it in the tub.

Travel was impossible, so we were stuck for several days, but of course my two brothers and I weren’t at all disappointed by this, as we didn’t have to go to school. We spent hours digging tunnels and forts in the drifts and pretending we were World War II soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge.

I moved to California in 1980 and lived in the Bay Area for three years. I experienced my first snowfall in Yosemite on New Year’s Eve—actually the early morning hours of January 1st, 1981. I slept in my car and remember waking up during the night, opening the door, and finding six inches of snow on the ground. By morning a foot had fallen. I put on chains and made my way around the valley. As the storm broke I photographed Upper Yosemite Fall with fresh snow and mist. The accompanying photo is one of the oldest in my collection. I’m sure I handheld this image, but luckily it’s sharp!

Later I loved watching the snow fall outside the windows when I worked at the Ahwahnee Hotel or The Ansel Adams Gallery. Often it fell in the form of big, fat flakes an inch across. Despite the shoveling, it never got old to me. Every snowstorm was an exciting event full of promise—promise of skiing and photography, but mostly of just beauty.

Those quiet snowfalls shape everything in Yosemite. Two to three million years ago, snow fell and accumulated faster than it could melt, piling up deeper and deeper until it began to move downhill under its own weight. Huge glaciers flowed and retreated four to ten times since then, eroding and transforming the landscape, turning a steep V-sided canyon into the broad, flat-floored, vertical-walled Yosemite Valley, polishing granite domes, leaving erratic boulders perched on their tops, and carving basins that now shelter alpine lakes.

Snow shapes the plants and animals as well. Mammals that live at high elevations find their food supply buried under a white blanket in winter, so they must either migrate, like deer, hibernate, like marmots and bears, or store their food supply, like chickarees and chipmunks.

Most birds migrate further south, or to lower elevations, but some endure the tough winters in the high country. Small birds, like mountain chickadees, go into a short-term hibernation each night. They find a sheltered place to roost, their body temperature drops, and they become semi-dormant, all in attempt to conserve precious energy in such a small body.

One evening, while waiting in vain for the sun to break through and light Horsetail Fall, I saw two birds fly into a nearby ponderosa pine. Closer inspection revealed two brown creepers nestled into the crevices in the bark—apparently their roosting spot for the night. They tolerated a close approach, and remained still for a two-second exposure. Creepers must also conserve energy during winter nights, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that their body temperature also drops each winter evening.

Snow molds the trees as well. Hardwood deciduous trees like oaks are scarce above 6000 feet because their branches break under the weight of snow. They’re replaced by pines and firs, whose soft wood bends instead of breaking, and whose conical shapes shed snow.

In Yosemite Valley, at 4000 feet, oaks are common, as most precipitation falls as rain, and the snow that does fall usually melts and falls out of the trees quickly. But before Christmas of 1996 a foot of heavy, wet snow came down and covered all the trees. Then the snow turned to rain. All that snow absorbed more and more moisture, and became heavier and heavier. We made sure our car wasn’t parked under any oak limbs.

At that time Claudia, Kevin and I lived behind The Ansel Adams Gallery in Ansel and Virginia Adams’ old house. Some of our co-workers lived in a duplex and in another small house further up the hill behind us. Claudia and I were sleeping soundly at 3 a.m. when gradually we became aware of some faint knocking. We realized there was someone at our door. Who could it be at three in the morning? We tiptoed out and warily eyed the front door, where we found Eric and Nancy, a couple who lived in the smaller half of the duplex, standing outside in the rain. We quickly ushered them into the house, where they told us that an oak limb had fallen through their roof. Most of the limb had remained on top, but a branch punctured the roof and its tip stopped six inches above their bed! Luckily they had heard something and just gotten out of bed, so they were unharmed—scared, but physically okay.

We helped them dry off, made hot tea, and called the park service’s maintenance personnel to try get the roof repaired. They actually came out, removed the limb, and put on a temporary patch that night in the pouring rain.

It kept raining and snowing until the end of the month, when a series of warm, tropical storms melted all the snow that had fallen in the high country. On the night of January 1-2, 1997, the biggest flood in recorded history inundated Yosemite Valley (click here to see a video).

Friends who lived in El Portal, just outside the park, told us about the tremendous noise the river made that night. The water moved thousands of tons of rock as it created new river channels. People witnessed sparks underneath the water as rocks collided.

Snow seems delicate, but it has enormous power when it accumulates into glaciers, or suddenly melts.

(I welcome comments. Do you have your own Yosemite snow story?)

Most of my photographs don’t have interesting stories behind them. Usually the most I can say is that I was in the right place at the right time, or I noticed something that would make a good composition. But I had an eventful day before making this image of the moon rising from Gates of the Valley.

This photograph was made on December 30th, 2009, the day before New Year’s Eve. I rose early and drove up to Badger Pass to go skiing with my brother-in-law Bob, nephew Jason, and Jason’s friend Noah. It was my first time skiing this winter, so I was a little rusty, but after two hours I felt my legs coming back. Four inches of snow had fallen the previous night and the conditions were great. Then, while gliding to the top of the Red Fox run, I saw a snowboarder out of the corner of my eye. He was facing left, making a right turn into my path, and moving fast. He clearly didn’t see me and I didn’t have time to turn, so I yelled, “Look out!” and braced for impact.

I found myself sprawled in the snow assessing the damage. I didn’t feel any major pain, but was dazed and had the wind knocked out of me. The snowboarder said, “Geez I’m sorry!” and then, “Are you all right?” I didn’t know the answer to that question. He asked, “Do you want me to call the Ski Patrol?” I didn’t know the answer to that either.

My ribs hurt, my left knee too, but eventually I decided that I could make it down the mountain under my own power. The snowboarder apologized repeatedly, but I told him that it was partly my fault. I didn’t say that it was probably 20 percent my fault for not looking around as diligently as I could have, but 80 percent his fault for turning across the hill at a high rate of speed without looking. In hindsight I should have summoned the Ski Patrol and had them pull his lift ticket, but I wasn’t thinking perfectly clearly at the time.

I hung around Badger for another two hours talking with friends and hoping that my knee would feel better so I could go skiing again. Yeah, I know that was silly, but what can I say—I love to ski. Eventually I decided that returning to the slopes was foolish, and drove down to the medical clinic in Yosemite Valley to get an assessment. I hoped that I could get in and out fast enough to photograph what looked like a promising sunset.

It took awhile to get seen by the doctor. X-rays were negative. The verdict was bruised ribs and a probable strained lateral collateral ligament in my left knee. They handed me Tylenol with Codeine and sent me home.

Leaving the clinic I saw orange clouds overhead. It looked like the end of the good sunset, but I knew it was too late to photograph it. I took my time driving out of the valley toward Yosemite West to meet Bob, Jason, Noah, and my wife Claudia. Passing Gates of the Valley I noticed lots of cars and photographers with tripods. What were they still doing out there? I stopped and immediately saw the reason: the moon was rising between El Capitan and Cathedral Rocks. Damn! I’d forgotten about the moon during my eventful day. It would be full at 11 a.m. the next day, the second full moon that month—a blue moon.

I quickly got out my camera and tripod, found a perfect spot next to the water that was inexplicably not occupied by another photographer, and bracketed a series of exposures as the moon rose through the mist. Eventually the shutter speeds reached two minutes and it was too dark to continue.

If I hadn’t been hit by the snowboarder I wouldn’t have gone down to the clinic, left late, and been at Gates of the Valley just when the moon was rising. In the end I guess this is just another story about being in the right place at the right time.

(By the way, my knee feels much better, and my ribs, while still sore, are improving steadily.)

In 1983 I lived in the San Francisco Bay area. My apartment manager, knowing that I liked to visit Yosemite on weekends to go rock climbing, told me that he had worked there in the past, and that if I wanted a job he could put me in touch with the manager of the Ahwahnee Hotel. Finding myself “between jobs,” as they say, I decided to take him up on that offer, and landed a position as a host in the Ahwahnee Dining Room.

It turns out that Yosemite is a hard place to leave. I met a wonderful woman named Claudia the next spring. We got married at the Ahwahnee two years later while we were both working for The Ansel Adams Gallery. Our son Kevin was born in 1990, and soon after that I left the Gallery to become a full-time photographer, but Claudia still works there. We lived behind the Gallery, right in the heart of Yosemite Valley, until 2005 when we moved to Mariposa, about an hour away.

In those years I’ve been privileged to see and photograph Yosemite in all its seasons, in all its moods, and meet some amazing people. Throughout the coming year I’ll share some of those images and experiences with you through this blog.