Southside Drive, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, CA, 10/20/2009
On a clear autumn day I arrived at the south shore of the Merced River in Yosemite Valley at sunrise to watch the sunlight work its way down El Capitan - the largest exposed granite face in the world. In autumn the river runs very slowly and produces perfect reflections. On this morning a slight fog lingered above the water, giving the shaded parts of the scene a cold and caliginous appearance. Here is an extremely wide angle view looking north to east just as the sun began rising above Taft Point, casting the day's first sunlight upon El Capitan Meadow. Moments later the river was awash in sunlight also, drastically muting the reflections and completely transforming the scene. El Capitan rises 3,600 feet above the valley floor. The formation was named by the Mariposa Battalion when it explored the Yosemite valley in 1851. El Capitan ("the captain" or "the chief") was a loose Spanish translation of the local Native American name for the cliff. Along with most of the other rock formations in Yosemite Valley, El Capitan was carved by glaciers.
