A Higher Light

At five mountain lakes, everything is illuminated

By Mark Smith

November 1^st, 2024

Over the years I've visited some of California's most beautiful mountain lakes. This article highlights four of these from the eastern Sierras, and a more famous one from the west.

High-elevation light surrounds them, creating vivid colors, deep shadows, and bright reflections - plus a few surprises.

Convict Lake

On the OTHER side of the Sierras - the interesting and less-crowded eastern side - lies Convict Lake, just down Highway 395 from the town of Mammoth Lakes.

Bright, penetrating light was coming from all directions: from the sun and sky of course, but it was also reflecting off the high mountains encircling the lake.

We could see trout in the shallows from 30-40 feet away.

Gem Lakes

The Little Lakes Valley hike (located near Rock Creek Lake, between Bishop and Mammoth Lakes) ends at Gem Lakes, a handful of small, connected lakes at 10,500 feet.

Tenaya Lake

Tenaya Lake is within Yosemite National Park - not down in the famous valley but up at 8,150 feet, in the high country along Highway 120.

On this particular fall day, the lake was showing off its colors.

Twin Lakes, Part 1

These two connected lakes are also in the Mammoth area, just above town.

This is what Twin Lakes looked like on a partly cloudy fall afternoon.

Twin Lakes, Part 2

A few days later I went back to Twin Lakes. The late afternoon sun was exceptionally bright, coming in at a low angle and illuminating everything, especially the fall colors.

I stood on this bridge, my back to the sun, and started photographing the surface of the water - which in places had turned blue as the sky reflected down upon it. In other spots it was glowing bright yellow and/or green with the reflections of the trees near the water's edge.

The afternoon breeze began to pick up, and things got even more interesting: The reflected light was being refracted (distorted) when it hit the water's surface, and then swirled into surprising, colorful shapes.

I don't know about you, but on the lower left I can see an alien figure with bubbles for eyeballs, doing The Monkey. And on the upper right, what appears to be a prehistoric flying baby turtle.

If that's not what you're seeing, it's probably for the best :-)

Look closely: You can still see the plants on the lake bottom, which are "really there," along with these reflections, which are "not really there"- they only lasted for the 500th of a second that the camera lens was open.

And to top it off: A golden Thanksgiving turkey!

Created in the moment by water, wind, and mountain light.

Lake Tahoe

One late afternoon I was strolling in the shallows along the lake's north shore, ankle-deep in the lazy, shimmering tide.

At first, the teeny waves rhythmically lapping onto shore all appeared the same, kind of monotonous.

And of course; why wouldn’t they?

But as I was shooting the tide with a long telephoto lens, I began capturing some interesting patterns in the sand and water, with varying light and color.

This got my attention.

And no, I wasn't on mushrooms :-)

I realized: This was a close-up view of our natural world at its most ancient and fundamental, even random and playful - doing its thing whether I was standing there or not.