Winter Storm, Range of Light
This isn’t technically a very good photo, unfortunately — there’s a lot of lens flare (it’s shot into what remained of the sun, which was just behind the peaks), and the exposure is problematic and had to be experimented with in Lightroom and Photoshop a bit before it looked the way I wanted. And the sharpness is a bit iffy in places. But then given the extreme wind and the blowing dust (and the cold) all around me as I was taking it, I’m kind of surprised I got any sort of photo at all….
I don’t usually do straight landscapes or scenics like this (as I keep saying elsewhere, dead cars in the desert are more my thing), but I couldn’t resist when I saw that windblown fringe of light on the Range of Light as the sun went down behind it in California’s Owens Valley. The photo is kind of dramatic, and accurately captures what was happening at the time (it was nearly monochromatic in real life at that point, too). And, as a photographer friend of mine said later, for all its technical faults, Ansel Adams would probably approve (he’s always lurking in the bushes around here, along with the rattlers).
And for me it’s very evocative of that the day in California’s Owens Valley late February this year that I stopped off US Highway 395 to take it…
After taking a bunch of pix down near Coso in the southern end of the valley, I get back on to US Highway 395 and head north for Bishop. It’s mid-afternoon; there’s a winter storm warning for the Eastern Sierra and the Owens Valley, and the wind’s definitely picking up. But I’m not too concerned — I’ve been through a few of these before over the decades. At least it’s not forecast to snow heavily, which would cause me issues getting up to Reno the next day. The northbound traffic’s fairly heavy — there’s a lot of SUV and pickup traffic, probably heading up to Mammoth. The southbound traffic is sparse. As I get near Olancha, the wind suddenly starts getting ferocious, tugging at the car, and blowing tumbleweed across the road. Just past Olancha it sends a large curtain of dust and salt hundreds of feet into the air across the breadth of the valley. I see a couple of very large fat unstable twisting willy willies off in the distance; as I drive through Cartago a thick dust-and-salt cloud very suddenly makes it nearly impossible to see the other cars on the highway for a couple of seconds. It’s kind of scary, and the resulting air quality from Olancha right up to Big Pine is poor — I can taste the salt and feel the grit in my mouth the entire way. I pull over for a while until it seems less dangerous.
By Independence, the wind is serious — not only is snow being very visibly blown off the Sierra and joining the dust and salt haze in the air (under an otherwise mostly clear sky), but all vehicles larger than a pickup are now being pulled over and stopped by Caltrans and the CHP. A few miles on I can see one reason why — there’s a large truck on its side off the side of the highway, presumably blown over (later, I read about at least two other trucks being blown over on 395 as well). The wind is now furious, making it hard to drive even the Forester safely and steadily; I reduce speed to 50 MPH, but the SUVs just keep whizzing and swerving by unstably. I see a bunch more willy willies off to my right, tearing across the valley (when I can actually see the rest of the valley). A lot of the tumbleweeds are blowing across ahead of me without even touching the road.
I stop somewhere up towards Taboose Creek to take a few pix of the Sierra in the fading light, which is where the shot above comes from. The power lines above me hiss and crackle and pop loudly as I take photos with my D800; the wires look like they’re swinging dangerously. It looks harshly beautiful up there on the mountains, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere up there on a day like today. The wind makes it difficult to open the car doors; at one point I worry that my Subaru’s passenger-side door is about to be ripped off by the gusts. My eyes are watering badly from the dust; my throat stings. I worry about the front element of my (expensive) lens — a couple of decades ago I got sand damage to one of my big format view camera lenses in a sudden sandstorm in the Mojave, so I have form here (I also lost the camera’s bellows and front standard, but they were easier to replace than the lens). I put a UV filter on the front of the lens to stop any damage; it’s one of the reasons why the lens flare was so bad, I guess.
I decide to just stay near Taboose Creek until it calms down a bit; this actually happens fairly quickly, and within an hour or so it’s just a more normal chaotic Owens Valley windstorm. Approaching Bishop I can see at least a mile of trucks pulled over on the southbound side of the highway, with Caltrans and the sheriff’s department stopping all trucks in either direction now. At the motel checkin the clerk behind the desk cheerfully tells me it’s forecast to be even worse tomorrow. Wonderful. (Spoiler: it wasn’t — it was relatively calm and sunny the next day, and getting to Reno via Mono Lake and Twin Lakes was easy).
