Polly, Ben, and Jerry (L to R) performing a group-yip howl

To some people, the sound of coyotes howling is chilling, but I’ve always loved it. It’s a sound that resonates with something primitive and wild in my soul.

There are some common myths about coyote howls—that they howl at the moon, or when they’re beginning a hunt, or when they sense prey. But coyotes do none of those things. They howl as much under a new moon as a full one, and often do it during the day. While wolves frequently howl before a hunt, coyotes don’t; the small animals that form the bulk of their diet don’t require the pack cohesion and cooperation that this pre-hunt howl seems to foster. And coyotes remain silent when hunting, lest they warn prey of their approach.

So why do they howl? During the months I followed Jerry, Ben, Faye, and Polly, the pack I wrote about a few weeks ago, I saw and heard them howl many times. Curious about this behavior, I read about the subject in scientific papers, and tried to correlate this information with my own observations. I found that the howls could be divided into three categories: what biologists call a group-yip howl, a contact howl, and a bark-howl.

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Detail of my favorite oak tree in Sentinel Meadow

This is my favorite oak tree in Yosemite Valley. I’ve photographed it from every angle, in every season. It’s an old tree with a unique shape and undeniable character. It stands alone in Sentinel (Chapel) Meadow just east of the boardwalk. From Southside Drive you can photograph it with Yosemite Falls in the background. Viewed from the other side its top curls like an ocean wave. This image, taken from the “back” side, shows its intricate branches etched with snow, and olive-green moss covering its trunk.

Yosemite is justifiably famous for its large granite cliffs and spectacular waterfalls. But its special character is created by the juxtaposition of all that naked, vertical rock with the meadows, meandering river, and stately groves of oak trees on the valley floor.

The large, spreading oaks in Yosemite Valley are California black oaks. While common at middle elevations in the Sierra Nevada, large, pure stands of black oaks are rare. Yet Yosemite Valley has two such stands, in Cook’s Meadow and El Capitan Meadow. It’s a privilege to walk through these groves and look through the arching limbs of oaks toward Cathedral Rocks or Yosemite Falls.

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Horsetail Fall at sunset, February 1995

Many people remember Yosemite’s firefall. On summer evenings from 1872 until 1968 the owners and employees of the Glacier Point Hotel pushed burning hot embers off the top of the Glacier Point cliff toward Yosemite Valley. The effect resembled a waterfall of fire. When the hotel burned down in 1969 the park service decided to end the ritual because this unnatural event caused visitors to trample meadows in their attempts to find a viewing spot.

I first visited Yosemite in 1980, so I never saw the firefall. On the park’s centennial anniversary in 1990 rumors spread that the park service would reenact the firefall, unannounced, but it never happened.

Yosemite, though, has an amazing natural “firefall.” For about ten days each February, if conditions are right, a thin ribbon of water dropping from the East Buttress of El Capitan, called Horsetail Fall, turns vivid orange when backlit by the setting sun.

Most waterfalls lie in amphitheaters, so even if they’re struck by the setting sun—or the rising sun for that matter—it would be impossible to stand on the other side of the water and see light shining through the fall. To view a backlit waterfall at sunrise or sunset, the fall has to descend over a high, open cliff so it can catch that early- or late-day light, and the cliff has to be oriented east-west (with the waterfall facing north or south) so that you can be looking through the water toward the sun—i.e., standing to the west of the fall looking east at sunrise, or to the east of the fall looking west at sunset.

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Ben on top of a snow-covered log

In the winter and spring of 1994 I spent every spare moment following and photographing a group of coyotes who lived in the center of Yosemite Valley. Here’s the story behind this photograph of the coyote I called Ben.

It was snowing heavily when I picked my son Kevin up from preschool. Returning home I had to park the car at the top of the unplowed driveway or risk getting stuck. As we walked down the hill through the deepening snow I spotted fresh tracks: two coyotes had passed by. I knew they had to be members of a pack I had been following and photographing, as their territory included our house behind The Ansel Adams Gallery. I handed Kevin to his mom, grabbed my camera, 300 mm lens, and tripod, and set out to follow the trail.

The tracks wound through Yosemite Village and then out toward Cook’s Meadow. I knew the coyotes could appear at any moment, so I was ready, with the camera mounted on the tripod, covered in a plastic bag, and slung over my shoulder. The trail led me to Sentinel Bridge, and just beyond that I spotted a coyote curled up on top of a log. I recognized him: it was a male I called Ben.

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Bridalveil Fall

It’s still winter in Yosemite Valley. There’s snow on the ground, and the trees are bare with no hint of buds. Nights are cold. The sun still takes a low path through the southern sky, and the waterfalls lie quietly against the cliffs.

But there are subtle signs of the approaching spring. Each day lasts a little longer than the previous one, and sunlight is reaching some spots for the first time in months. Bridalveil Fall, for example, now gets brushed by sunshine in the late afternoon, while in December it saw none. And the volume of water in Bridalveil and the other falls is slowly increasing. Last year the waterfalls dwindled to trickles in late July, and stayed that way through December, with the exception of a few days following a heavy October rain. But now, in February, the snowpack along the Valley’s rim is deep, and the lengthening days prompt some of that snowpack to melt and pour over the falls—not in great volume, but enough to make them real waterfalls again.

None of the major falls in Yosemite Valley completely freeze during the winter, but ice usually forms along their sides every night. During a cold snap that ice may not melt alongside shady Bridalveil for days or weeks, and impressive ice sculptures can develop at its sides and base.

Sunnier Yosemite Falls sheds its ice every day. You can often estimate how cold the previous night was by looking at the amount of ice alongside the Upper Fall in the morning: the more ice, the colder the night. This ice starts melting as soon as the sun hits it. I’ve stood out in Cook’s Meadow many times watching chunks of ice periodically break off and listening to the booms when they hit bottom. All that ice builds up into a large cone at the base of the Upper Fall, clearly visible from the Chapel Meadow. In spring—usually in April—that ice breaks apart, and Yosemite Creek and the Merced River suddenly become filled with ice. This frazil ice, as it’s called, can completely cover the ground below Lower Yosemite fall, making it seem as if a very localized storm dumped a foot or two of slushy snow there and nowhere else.

Rainbow, Upper Yosemite Fall

For photographers, Yosemite Falls presents a dilemma. In spring, when enormous quantities of water pour off its lip, the light on the falls is terrible. It’s in shade before 10 a.m. and after 4 p.m., and in between the sun is high and the light harsh. The winter light is wonderful—shortly after it rises the sun casts a beautiful warm glow on the Upper Fall. But for most of the winter only a trickle of water is visible. Now though, in February, the sunlight reaches Upper Yosemite Fall early in the day, and the increasing snowmelt brings a fair amount of water over its lip. As a bonus, you can often see a rainbow early in the morning from the eastern end of Cook’s Meadow or around Yosemite Village.

In the coming months the days will grow longer, the snow will melt faster, and before long the Valley will be filled with the roar of waterfalls. These spring cataracts are impressive and awe-inspiring, but unapproachable. Getting too close means being soaked or risking a slip and deadly fall into rapids. In winter you can get closer and examine the contours of the fall and surrounding rocks in more detail. Instead of a deafening roar, you hear musical sounds of water lapping and splashing against rocks. There’s a quiet beauty and serenity to these waterfalls in winter that you can’t experience in any other season.

El Capitan reflected in the Merced River, Saturday, January 23rd

Two weeks ago I wrote about heavy, wet snow that broke branches in Yosemite Valley in December of 1996, dropping a limb through our neighbor’s roof. Last week history repeated itself. It snowed off and on from Monday until Thursday, adding about six inches of wet snow to the valley floor by Thursday afternoon, but then the temperature dropped, it snowed through the night, and by Friday morning the snow was 16 inches deep on the valley floor.

All this heavy, wet snow was apparently too much for many trees and limbs. Branches fell on roofs, cars, and across roadways. The Park service had to close all the roads into Yosemite for more than 24 hours because they couldn’t keep up with the tree removal; they would no sooner clear stretch of roadway when another branch would block it. Standing in Cook’s Meadow Friday morning with my workshop group we heard, and often saw, limbs or whole trees falling every few minutes. Many visitors were evacuated from their rooms at Yosemite Lodge, and several cars were crushed by falling limbs, but fortunately no one was injured.

Saturday afternoon the storms finally ended, and we stood across the river from El Capitan watching the mist and clouds swirl across its face and photographing golden reflections in the water. (You can see another image from this evening on my other blog.)

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Ponderosa pines in a snowstorm

It rarely rains in Yosemite in the summer. We often see one sunny day after another for weeks.

In winter the weather gets more interesting. I’m teaching a workshop in Yosemite Valley this week, and it’s been wet. Today brought the fifth storm in four days. We’ve seen four inches of precipitation during that period. Most of it has fallen as snow, but the temperature has been hovering just above freezing, so while the snow accumulates during intense downpours, as soon as the precipitation slows down the snow begins to melt, and the roads and walkways become filled with slush. But away from the roads it looks like a winter wonderland, with tree branches and cliff ledges outlined in white.

Snowflakes and cottonwood trees

The temperature usually drops gradually during most winter storms in California, and it’s always exciting when rain changes to snow. In winter, of course, every raindrop is born as a snowflake; rain is just snow that melted on the way down. When the temperature gets close to freezing, my wife Claudia and I like to look for thick rain—when the snowflakes haven’t completely melted and slushy drops hit your outstretched hand or spatter the windshield. As the temperature drops further snow starts to fall in earnest. There’s a moment when the ground is still bare, but thick, fat flakes fill the air. The biggest flakes fall when the temperature is near freezing and tiny individual flakes are wet enough to stick together and form balls an inch or more in diameter. Driving at night these snowballs fly at you in a mesmerizing stream, a natural kaleidoscope.

The snow itself cools surfaces and soon it starts sticking to trees and bushes, then the ground, then finally pavement. When the trees have only about a half an inch of snow on them each branch becomes delicately outlined, an etching come to life.

If the snow continues it gradually fills the woods and grows deeper in the meadows. There’s a point when you can start to feel it when you’re walking—when your feet have to push some snow out of the way with each step. It’s a pleasant feeling at first, like walking through a cloud. You watch your feet kick out little plumes with each step. But as the snow gets deeper walking becomes difficult, and it’s time to put on skis or snowshoes.

Clearing storm, Three Brothers and the Merced River

Falling snow is beautiful, but a clearing storm in Yosemite Valley can be magical. As the skies clear,  swirling mist alternately hides and reveals impossibly high cliffs. Spots of sunlight appear and disappear, illuminating first one rock, then another. This sight always leaves me humbled and awestruck no matter how many times I’ve seen it before.

Band of light on El Capitan

(Note: I’m making two posts this week since I was late getting the first one out.)

Tuesday night it rained in Yosemite Valley and snowed at higher elevations. Next week forecasters are predicting a series of storms with snow levels from 5000 to 6000 feet, so Yosemite Valley, at 4000 feet, will probably see mostly rain.

That’s too bad. I love snow. Growing up in suburban New York and Connecticut I never saw enough of it, but there were a few big blizzards to lend excitement to the otherwise drab winters.

The most memorable storm occurred while we were living in Brewster, New York, in a new development on top of a hill. This must have been the “Lindsay” blizzard of February 8 – 10, 1969, so called because Mayor John Lindsay of New York was blamed for poor snow removal in the city. I would have been ten years old, awaiting my eleventh birthday on February 13th. 20 inches of snow fell officially in the city. On top of our windy hill the snow piled into drifts ten feet high. The wind blew so hard it drove snow through vents and built a drift in our attic. My mother organized the family into a bucket brigade to remove the snow from the attic and melt it in the tub.

Travel was impossible, so we were stuck for several days, but of course my two brothers and I weren’t at all disappointed by this, as we didn’t have to go to school. We spent hours digging tunnels and forts in the drifts and pretending we were World War II soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge.

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Rising Moon, Gates of the Valley

Most of my photographs don’t have interesting stories behind them. Usually the most I can say is that I was in the right place at the right time, or I noticed something that would make a good composition. But I had an eventful day before making this image of the moon rising from Gates of the Valley.

This photograph was made on December 30th, 2009, the day before New Year’s Eve. I rose early and drove up to Badger Pass to go skiing with my brother-in-law Bob, nephew Jason, and Jason’s friend Noah. It was my first time skiing this winter, so I was a little rusty, but after two hours I felt my legs coming back. Four inches of snow had fallen the previous night and the conditions were great. Then, while gliding to the top of the Red Fox run, I saw a snowboarder out of the corner of my eye. He was facing left, making a right turn into my path, and moving fast. He clearly didn’t see me and I didn’t have time to turn, so I yelled, “Look out!” and braced for impact.

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Bridalveil Fall and Jeffrey Pine from Lower Turtleback Dome

In 1983 I lived in the San Francisco Bay area. My apartment manager, knowing that I liked to visit Yosemite on weekends to go rock climbing, told me that he had worked there in the past, and that if I wanted a job he could put me in touch with the manager of the Ahwahnee Hotel. Finding myself “between jobs,” as they say, I decided to take him up on that offer, and landed a position as a host in the Ahwahnee Dining Room.

It turns out that Yosemite is a hard place to leave. I met a wonderful woman named Claudia the next spring. We got married at the Ahwahnee two years later while we were both working for The Ansel Adams Gallery. Our son Kevin was born in 1990, and soon after that I left the Gallery to become a full-time photographer, but Claudia still works there. We lived behind the Gallery, right in the heart of Yosemite Valley, until 2005 when we moved to Mariposa, about an hour away.

In those years I’ve been privileged to see and photograph Yosemite in all its seasons, in all its moods, and meet some amazing people. Throughout the coming year I’ll share some of those images and experiences with you through this blog.