Today, we were going to finish up shooting Yosemite Valley and then drive up the Glacier Point Road to climb and photograph from the top of Sentinel Dome. Sentinel Dome is an amazing place to shoot 360-degree panoramas, so I was looking forward to being there for our final sunset in Yosemite. The plan always seems so simple...
As soon as we started dropping down toward Yosemite Valley from Crane Flat, we realized something was wrong. Our gorgeous deep blue skies were an ugly, smoky gray. We continued driving down to the Valley hoping that it might be spared the smoky haze. It only got worse. We later found out that the Park Service was doing a controlled burn near the north entrance, and the smoke was blowing into the Valley.
It was obvious there would be nothing to shoot in the Valley or from Sentinel Dome, so we switched to Plan B. We returned to our campground for a couple hours and then drove back up the Tioga Pass Road to see if Tuolumne Meadows might be above the haze at sunset.
Our first stop was Olmstead Point
and our quest to get good images of pikas. Haze in the air
doesn't affect shooting pikas. It took awhile, but we finally spotted a pika. Once we knew where
to look and saw his pattern of behavior, it was relatively easy to photograph him from above. Then, it was time
to climb down below the rocks and see if we could get some better close-up shots. Carol found a pika that would run down
across the granite, bite off a branch from a bush, and then carry it back up to his hole in the rocks.
She got a couple of great shots of the pika carrying a branch. I moved over to an area where
I had been hearing the pikas and started scanning the rocks. Just as I was about ready to turn around and
go back by Carol, I looked down at my feet to see a pika eating a tuft of grass. He was only a couple
feet away. Sometimes, you're just lucky.
|
|
After we had shot enough pikas, we moved on to Tuolumne Meadows. We have always loved walking out across Tuolumne Meadows
and shooting sunset along the river.
There was still quite a bit of haze to the west, but we hoped we could find a place to shoot
across the river to the south. As we hiked across the meadow, we noticed a herd of deer feeding near a sharp curve in the river.
We carefully worked our way around the open space and situated ourselves so the deer would have to pass us to move into other areas of the meadow.
We kept our distance and allowed the deer to get used to us being there. In a few minutes, they ate their way right past us.
It was a herd of twelve, mostly young bucks with antlers covered with velvet. They were a lot more hungry than worried about us.
|
|
 |
As we walked back to the car, we saw a small ground squirrel peaking up above the grasses. There are lots of belding ground squirrels in Tuolumne
Meadows, but this "ground squirrel" was different as it hopped around the area. It popped up and stood on its back legs every few seconds
to look around, moved a few feet, and then popped up again. Now, I know what the song, "Pop Goes the Weasel" describes.
We had found a weasel. He was extremely curious and paralleled us as we walked back toward the car. He'd pop up to see where we had moved, and each time he dropped down into the grass, we moved closer. Eventually, we got within a couple feet of him. We played this little game for several minutes, until he tired of us and simply dropped into his hole. Or maybe he felt sorry for us because it was getting dark, and the mosquitoes were feasting on us.
Today didn't go anything like our plans, but the pika, the herd of deer, and the weasel more than made up for what we missed.
Previous Day
Return to Trip Page