Leon Turnbull Photography

Well, I was trying to think of a good hike and place to go for sunrise. I had not been up in the Wright’s Lake area before, and thought it would be a good possibility. I talked my friend Rob into getting up at some ungodly hour and going along with me. Fortunately, he likes photography as well. We drove up to Wright’s Lake in the dark, and found snow on the road as we got closer to the lake. I was a bit surprised by this. I was hoping there would be snow on the mountain peaks, but I was not expecting snow on the road. This road is in-passable in the winter, but at this time of the year it was still ok. It did put us a bit behind schedule. I was still hoping we could hike up to Grouse Lake by sunrise. But I totally underestimated this hike. There was quite a bit of snow on the trail, which makes hiking quite a bit more difficult. It was not enough to need snowshoes, but it sure got our hiking boots soaking wet. It was also rather difficult to even see the trail at all, especially when it is dark. A bigger problem was that my GPS refused to work in the cold weather. Nice. Fortunately, there was another hiker who had gone up there before us, probably the day before. We followed in his footsteps, which made the hiking quite a bit easier. Nonetheless, we managed to lose the trail at least once, and ended up way off the trail, scrambling up a steep hill in snow that was quite deeper than you might think. We eventually found our way back to the main trail, but by this time it was already way past sunrise. Not only that but I could see that our destination, Grouse Lake, involved much more of an ascent than I anticipated. We were going to be arriving at Grouse Lake probably an hour or more after sunrise. Oh well. We still wanted to continue on up to the lake anyway. It would be a good hike, if nothing else.

When we finally arrived up at Grouse Lake, however, we were in for a really nice treat. The lighting was still very good, and the sun had not yet risen above the surrounding mountains. I told Rob that God must’ve stopped the sun for us, like he did for Joshua. Well not exactly, but it was a blessing, and I was quite surprised. I had mistakenly thought that the sun would hit Grouse Lake very early and from a different angle. But we had plenty of time to take some nice photographs before the sun finally got high enough above the mountains. The lake was lightly frozen over, which also made for a very beautiful setting. It was a fabulous morning in the Sierra Nevada.