Forest dogwood, 2009 (part of my current exhibit at The Ansel Adams Gallery)

Forest dogwood, 2009 (part of my current exhibit at The Ansel Adams Gallery)


Just a quick note about conditions in Yosemite before I start my Spring Yosemite Digital Camera workshop tomorrow…

Spring is a bit behind schedule this year. A few trees have new leaves, and a few more have buds, but Yosemite Valley hasn’t really started greening up yet. And there’s no sign of dogwoods. Looks like the dogwood bloom will be at least a week or two late; it will probably start the first or second week of May.

Down in the Merced River Canyon, west of the park, you can still find some nice redbud, but they’re fading quickly. By this weekend most will have leafed out. There aren’t many other flowers to be seen either.

But here in Yosemite Valley the waterfalls are roaring. I watched spray being blown all the way from the bottom to the top of Upper Yosemite Fall, something I can’t recall ever seeing before. It must have been the wind, or perhaps some strange configuration of the ice cone at its base. But in any case the recent warm weather has increased the rate of snowmelt, and a lot of water is coming down.

The weather is supposed to turn cooler this week, so the flow will temporarily diminish a bit, but any warm spells between now and mid-June will create heavy runoff. I expect this to be a great year for waterfalls.