Four Mile Trail, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, CA, 10/17/2012
In mid October of 2012 I visited California's Yosemite Valley hoping to enjoy some colorful autumn landscape photography. Instead I was greeted by warm summer weather and green trees. The year had been very dry, and few trees had changed to their fall colors. On this cloudless afternoon I hiked up Four Mile Trail from beneath Sentinel Rock. After climbing about 1,000 feet above the valley floor I looked westward and spotted this vignette of magnificent El Capitan through the trees and shrubs. El Capitan rises 3,600 feet and is the largest exposed granite face in the world. The formation was named by the Mariposa Battalion when it explored Yosemite in 1851. El Capitan ("the captain" or "the chief") is a loose Spanish translation of the local Native American name for the cliff. Artist Point above Discovery View (Tunnel View, at the east end of Wawona Tunnel) is in the distance at left.
