Taken from Medlicott Dome in Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park, on June 12th, 2015

Granite is pretty tough stuff. You can walk on it, climb on it, and drive steel spikes into it that will hold the weight of an elephant. It juts from the earth in stately monolith form, and bulldozes forests in rock slide form. In landscape form it shapes the course of rivers, and in mountain form it even creates its own weather. At first glance granite seems to be imperturbable, invincible stuff.

But all it takes is a little perspective to see that is not necessarily true. On a summertime adventure in Tuolumne Meadows, my friend and I scrambled to the top of massive Medlicott Dome. Along the way we passed endless chasms, cracks, slabs, and flakes of rock. We saw places where the rock was fissured by countless years of freeze and thaw, and where the unending march of weather and time had produced house-sized boulders. Reaching the top of the dome we looked out on a landscape dotted with huge granite forms scoured and scraped by an ancient procession of ice.

More striking than the physical rock we could see was the telltale evidence left behind by something we couldn’t: water. The granite spires and ridges were certainly vast and impressive, but it was clear that this was a landscape shaped by water. And while the rock we were standing on seemed impossibly tough, it was clear that over time, water is the stronger of the two.

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The winter of 2013-2014 was the driest on record for California, and the resulting Sierra snowpack was pitiful at best. Still, the blanket of snow that covered the landscape at Cathedral Peak in May retrospectively looks better and better as the 2014-2015, which started so promisingly, now limps along with nary a storm in sight. As much as I look forward to the coming of spring and summer every year I know that California needs winter to stick around for at least a few more months.

As to the matter of taking this photo, it was a tough one to get. Mostly because I was under-prepared. I trudged the four miles in to this spot sans snowshoes, postholing nearly every step and soaking my boots in the process. I brought just enough clothing to deal with the 10 degree F temps, which didn’t mean I was comfortable, just not frozen.

In the morning, when I had finally drifted off to a shivery sleep, I almost didn’t get out of bed because I quick glance out my tent flap told me it was overcast. It wasn’t until my eyes (and brain) focused a little more that I realized I wasn’t looking at gray skies, but rather a huge Sierra wave cloud that had formed above Cathedral Peak and the rest of the Sierra crest.

I quickly donned my snow gear, grabbed my camera, and crunched my way up the frozen snow to this overlook above Upper Cathedral Lake. Then it was simply a matter of waiting for the sun to light up the wave cloud with the magenta hues of sunrise.

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After slogging through four miles of slushy snow I reached Upper Cathedral Lake just after sunset. Exhausted from the tiresome hike in I didn’t try to photograph the lingering colors of sunset, but rather set up my camp in the waning light. As evening cooled down it sucked all the moisture out of the air and soon the skies were so clear and crisp they almost seemed solid.

A handful of stars began to scintillate in the inky blue sky above Cathedral Peak and as the night deepened more and more pinpoints of light added their sparkle to the sky. By about 9:30 pm thousands of brilliant flecks of light encrusted the sky. A crescent moon just above Mt. Tressider was adding a faint glow to the ice and snow on Upper Cathedral Lake and I used a long exposure to bring out the sparkles, both in the sky and on the ground.

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The Yosemite Falls Moonbow is one of those rare visual phenomena that attracts visitors and photographers from around the world. Each spring the waterfalls in the park gush with snow melt and release vast plumes of spray into the air. Which means that when the moon is full (or nearly so) during the months of April, May, and June, it sits at the perfect geometry and shines with a bright enough light to cause a rainbow to appear in the mist of the falls. Now, moonbows can actually be seen on any waterfall where there’s enough spray and you can get the alignment right. But because the Yosemite Falls Moonbow is so grandiose and only happens a handful of days a year it has become one of the most famous moonbows worldwide.

In April of 2014 I wanted to capture the Yosemite Falls Moonbow from a unique vantage point, rather than from the typical viewing area up near the base of the lower falls. Any rainbow appears directly opposite from its light source, in an arc 42 degrees out from the direction of the light. Because the full moon was so high in the sky on the night I shot this the moonbow was going to appear fairly low. Meaning that if I wanted any chance of seeing the moonbow on the upper section of Yosemite Falls, it meant that I had to get high up along the south rim of Yosemite Valley.

So at 9 pm I packed up my camera gear and hiked up the 4 Mile trail, a steep path that leads from the Valley floor to Glacier Point, some 3,000 feet higher. About halfway up the trail I found a clearing in the brush with an outstanding view of the entirety of Yosemite Falls. The moonbow is often faint, or even invisible to the human eye, only appearing in the camera after a long exposure. So I took a quick test shot from my vantage point and lo and behold: there was the Yosemite Falls Moonbow, shining out brilliantly. I spent the next few minutes tweaking my composition and dialing in my camera’s settings, then watched and shot for the next hour as the falls danced and swayed in the wind and the moonbow shimmered in the mist below.

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