Monitor Pass
Last weekend, my friend Rob and I headed up to Monitor Pass for sunrise and to find some Fall Colors. I got up at 3:45am, had myself some breakfast, coffee, and waited for Rob to arrive at my house. And I waited. And waited. He arrived about 15 minutes later than planned; he said his alarm clock did not go off. He just happened to wake up at about 4, then sped down Folsom Auburn at record speed in order to get to my house. I guess it was lucky he was only 15 minutes late. Anyhow, we got in my car and scooted up the hill. Then we ran into some stupid road construction. The flag man was in a total daze. He looked like a zombie, literally. He must have been standing there all night long. We waited. And waited. About five minutes or more later, the pilot car came and directed us (slowly!) through the construction zone. By the way, there was no construction going on! It was too early in the morning, and they had not even started yet. What the hey? Why did we even have to wait? Meanwhile … the clouds were rolling in, the sun was coming up, and it looked like it was going to be a total killer sunrise. Finally, we got through that nonsense, and continued driving up to Monitor Pass. We arrived right at about sunrise, but we could not really find a good spot to shoot the sunrise from, with so little time. Rob got a good sunrise shot though, but I did not. If only we had arrived 20 minutes earlier. 🙂
Anyway, the Fall Colors on Monitor Pass and elsewhere were just about perfect. Beautiful yellow colors in the Aspen trees, and some nice orange as well. Personally, I have a lot of trouble photographing Aspen trees, and finding good compositions that I really like. In fact, I wasn’t even into photographing Fall Colors this year. Normally, I like to get up to the Tahoe area at least 3 or 4 times. But this year, not.
What I like is water. If I can find some water to photograph, I am a happy camper. This was my vision for this particular morning, finding some nice Aspen trees in color along Monitor Creek. And as we drove back down from the top of Monitor Pass after sunrise, I saw a nice possibility along the creek beside the highway. I stopped, and scrambled down the steep bank to the creek. I got to the creek, but I got blocked by some very thick brush. I needed to go a bit further upstream to get my shot. The only way to do that would be to wade, but I didn’t feel like taking my boots off. So I picked up a couple big rocks, and threw them in the creek. Then I stepped on them to rock hop further upstream. Hey, it worked. I got the shot that I wanted.