The Magazine of The Sierra Club
Treading Through Tuolumne
In a new book collection, photographer Ryan Alonzo celebrates a spectacular corner of Yosemite.
"Beautiful sunsets happen every week, but there are only a few times when you get those crazy full-pink ones," said photographer Ryan Alonzo.
From high places the rippled and broken spires of the Cathedral Range appear as a choppy sea, rolling at the slow pace of geologic time.
A Native American summer encampment for thousands of years, Tuolumne Meadows inspired the creation of Yosemite National Park. Tioga Road allows access to this rarefied mountain ecosystem and into the miles of wilderness beyond.
Clouds are the dramatic layers in the grand theater of the mountain sky.
The Milky Way rises over Mount Dana. The dark night sky over Tuolumne enchants stargazers, inviting the imagination into the reaches of space and ancient lore.
In this wild place, the deep rhythms of nature emerge. Within the rich waterside habitat, growth, reproduction, predation, and decomposition become a symphony of life in the forest.
Granite domes, distant clouds, conifer forests, and shadowed snow join in a luminous crescendo of sunset before resolving under clear stars.
Photographs by Ryan Alonzo
High in the Sierra Nevada, Tuolumne Meadows sits at the crest of Yosemite National Park. Glacier-carved domes and mountains, rivers and fields, flora and fauna shape this idyllic landscape—a powerful, peaceful natural space beloved for its implicit grace.
“It’s one of those places you can fall in love with,” Ryan Alonzo told Sierra by phone. Alonzo is a photographer and Tuolumne transplant. He has traipsed across almost every corner of the Meadows—and has developed an acute eye for the light that hits its features, the angles that best “do proper justice,” as he says, to Tuolumne’s splendor.
Alonzo has photographed the region regularly for years. He first became attached to the Valley during family camping trips as a child, but he has stuck around season after season to scope Tuolumne’s creeks and peaks. He works with Yosemite Conservancy, currently as a full-time photographer. His book, Tuolumne in Pictures, was released earlier this year—a follow-up to his 2014 book Yosemite in Pictures, also published by Yosemite Conservancy. The collection of Tuolumne photos, he said, has been a long time coming.
The book's pictures (some of which are included here) have been taken over many years, but most are from the summer 2014 season. Vibrant text complements Alonzo’s photos with rich natural history of Tuolumne, which the photographer wrote with his best friend, National Park Service interpretive ranger Eric Smith, who frequently accompanies Alonzo when he heads out to take pictures.
“I’ll say hey, the clouds are looking good, we should go run up this peak,” said Alonzo about finding shots with Smith. “When you’re at Tuolumne Meadows, if you look at any of the peaks 360 degrees around, I’ve been to just about every spot.”
At Tuolumne’s 8,600 feet of elevation, snow usually lingers for a sizable portion of the year. One of Alonzo’s favorite photos in the collection—the second, in the slideshow above—is from the day Tioga Pass opened after the snow last year. Alonzo darted to a spot around 12,000 feet in elevation to get the perfect shot. “It was freezing, I was cold, I had snowshoes on, but I was waiting for the sun to be perfect,” he said. And, as the photo reflects, his time was well worth it.
Now in midsummer, he described Tuolumne’s thunderstorms and beautiful sunsets. “It’s your ideal High Sierra dream.”
Alonzo hopes his photos leave a lasting impression on viewers. “I want to inspire people to get out and see these places," he said. Growing tourism has brought more nature-lovers to Tuolumne and other parts of Yosemite—but also more threats to the landscape. “I want people to come visit, but also to take care to preserve this area. Let it be beautiful, and share it with generations to come.”
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