On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether youâre traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
?BillinGlendaleCA
After the turn off to North Lake, the highway continues west for about 2 miles ending at Lake Sabrina. This is a man made lake built in the early 1900’s by damming the Middle Fork of Bishop Creek. It was named for the wife of the construction supervisor and the locals pronounce the name Sa-br-eye-na while there is no evidence that the woman who it is named for pronounced her name that way. The lake is part of a power generation project and is usually not full during the fall months. I shot a few photos from the dam and then headed into the lake bed to get some shots closer to the water to enhance the reflection of the mountain peaks with spots of fall color along the banks. Most of the fall color was along the road below the dam and I walked about 1/2 a mile down the road in search of interesting compositions.
Looking down the Middle Fork of Bishop Creek from the dam, White Mountain Peak(a 14,000 foot volcano) can be seen in the distance.
View across Lake Sabrina towards the peaks of the eastern Sierra. Fall color dots the landscape.
The creek flows down from the dam with several pools along the way.
This pool nicely reflected the fall color and the mountains behind it.
This was shot from one of the bridges that cross the creek.
This is one of the larger pools along the creek.
Aspens and the sky.
Nice fall color along the creek with the green pines in the background.
Chris T.
I’ve been up the White Mountains and they didn’t look very volcanic, so I had to look this up, but: the peak is the remains of some old Mesozoic era volcano, but the rock has been melted and transformed by rising granite and sits atop a big uplifted block. So it’s … sort of volcanic? The volcano that formed it is long gone.
(The Long Valley caldera, on the other hand, is a supervolcano, and that’s less than 100 miles west of there…!)
Baud
I don’t know why I assumed southern California didn’t get fall colors.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Chris T.: I guess extinct volcano, much of the area east of the Sierra has a history of volcanism. Long Valley is much closer, about 30 miles to the west. We’ll see shots from there soon.
@Baud: We do, but not as widespread as in the east or the Rockies. We generally don’t have the trees that produce fall color on the coastal areas, but do in the valleys in our mountains, it’s colder.
Rusty
I don’t realize either that California would have autumn colors. The pool reflecting the mountains and the last photo with the yellow and orange foliage are particularly beautiful. How much color adjustment do you use? Thank you for sharing!
p.a.
Wonderful!
JPL
Bill, Just beautiful!
Did you see the title of Cole’s post below.. I don’t agree with it at all. ?
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I was pleased to learn that Cole’s post immediately before this one wasn’t about you.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Rusty: If there’s water and far enough north or high enough to get cold temps, we get fall color. Further north we can get landscapes that rival the east or the Rockies. This area is about a 4 1/2 hour drive north of LA. I don’t alter the color much, I do enhance it as every photographer does in processing.
@p.a.: Thanks, there will be more.
@JPL: Thanks, I think that Cole fella’s on to me.
Why am I up at 3:30am? Adobe came out with new and improved versions of Lightroom and Photoshop yesterday, so I’m testing and learning how they work.
MomSense
These are beautiful
Baud
@Baud:
Ugh. Just saw JPL beat me to it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MomSense: Thanks much.
@Baud: As I noted, I think Cole’s on to me.
Wag
The larger pool reflection shot is really good. I like the emphasis of the horizontal.
Betty
What a lovely visit you had. Thanks for sharing it with these beautiful pictures.
lashonharangue
Great photos. Couldn’t make it back there this year but October is our favorite time in the eastern Sierra. Thanks for the reminder.
cope
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Beautiful pictures, thanks.
I only recently subscribed to PS and LR. Do I actively have to update it when updates come out?
Thanks again for the lovely shots.
mvr
Man those are some clear waters! Would love to be there.
Aaron
sa br EyE na?
pronounced like like vag I na?
stinger
Mission accomplished!
Agree with mvr about the water — it all looks drinkable, bathe-the-baby clear.
JanieM
@cope: I just subscribed this past summer. It tells me when there are updates, but doesn’t update until I tell it to, which is nice because big updates like yesterday’s hog a lot of resources.
If you go into Help->Update (I’m looking at it in Lightroom but I assume it’s similar in Photoshop), you’ll get the Creative Cloud Desktop, where you manage this stuff. But that desktop comes up on its own when there are updates to deal with. (At least for me, and I don’t think I did any custom settings, although I have a lot of my other apps set to manual update.)
cope
@JanieM: Thanks.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: As the wonderful site CAFallColor says: Dude, Autumn happens here too.
I spent 15 years in Massachusetts and I feel like our color out here doesn’t quite reach the level of New England (or from what I’ve seen virtually, Japan too) but we do get some great color as well. Â We don’t get nearly as much red, but we get lots one lovely gold from the aspens and cottonwoods. Â So while we don’t get the miles and miles of a panorama of gold, orange and red rolling hills, we do get some seriously kickass gold in the midst of some mountains that put the mountains of New England to shame, imo. Â It’s just different types/styles of fall color, both lovely.
PS great pix as always Bill!
Interstadial
Nice shots of the fall color! I didn’t get out there to see it this year, though I have many times in the past. This is one of my favorite parts of California. It’s not really southern California, but it’s most accessible from that region thanks to the geographic layout of California. When I lived in Los Angeles for a bit I enjoyed the easy access to this area.
Wikipedia claims that White Mountain Peak is an extinct volcano. That is not correct. Volcano means a mountain directly piled up by the accumulation of material exiting a volcanic vent. It does not mean volcanic deposits that happened 145 to 200 million years ago on a long-vanished landscape, that well over 100 million years later are uplifted and eroded to leave behind a peak. The rocks that make up White Mountain Peak are from the Jurassic and are that old.
More recent volcanic activity in the region, extending from Death Valley to Mono Lake (including the Long Valley Caldera), dates back from a few hundred to a few million years ago. It’s been happening under very different tectonic conditions than the ancient vulcanism that left the volcanic rocks now seen high up in parts of the Sierra Nevada and the White Mountains of California/Nevada.
Nora Lenderbee
We were just there a few weeks ago, hiking from Sabrina up to Midnight Lake. The aspens and willows looked like they were afire.
J R in WV
Nice work, Bill, as usual, Thanks for sharing fall color out west with us easterners. More gold than here in the Appalachian Mtns. Which is very late getting into fall colors if you ask me. We didn’t get as much rain as usual which appears to make a diff in the color schemes.
Mike G
I’ve been up there this time of year, it’s beautiful with the fall colors.
Stop at Indian Wells Brewery on 395, there’s nothing like fresh beer right off the bottling line.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Wag: Thanks, I liked that one too for the same reason.
@Betty: Glad you like them, it was the first of 3 drives up there.
@lashonharangue: This was the first year I made it up there, I was going to go last year, but there was too much smoke. I’d like to take the hike up to the Big Pine Lakes next year.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@cope: Thanks much.  I’m on Windows and receive notifications of updates from the Creative Cloud app in my action center.
@mvr: Wait until you see Convict Lake.
@Aaron: Um, yes.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@stinger: I hiked up above one of the other lakes about 50 years ago on a scout trip and the water is very drinkable.
@JanieM: Yeah, it lets you know and you manually initiate any updates. When the big releases first come out, they are pretty buggy too.
@UncleEbeneezer: Thanks. The color is pretty much confined to the valleys in the eastern Sierra and we don’t have the maples that you’d see in the East. I’ve seen pics from further north, one near Mt. Shasta that does have the rolling hills in gold.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Interstadial: Thanks, I’d call it Southern California cause it’s not Northern California at least the area around Bishop.
The range of recent volcanic activity ranges much further south along Walker Lane down to the Salton Sea(Coso and Fossil Falls, Amboy, etc).
@Nora Lenderbee: That’s some serious backpacking, I’ve seen photos of Moonlight Falls up that way.
@J R in WV: Thanks, this past year has been very dry and there was little snow pack so the color might be more impressive with a wetter rainy season.
@Mike G: It was my first visit up there for the fall color and I was impressed, I’ll do it again. I’ll have to leave the recommendation for adult beverages for others since I no long consume them.